US stocks slipped into red territory as the standoff between the US and Iran became more entrenched, raising doubts about progress on a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) and the S&P 500 (^GSPC) dropped below the flat line. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) fell 0.3% after stocks closed lower on Monday.
Ongoing geopolitical tensions and hardening demands around war compensation put downward pressure on equities.
On Sunday, President Trump rebuked Iran’s demand for reparations and said he would wait for economic pressure to build on the country. “We are only semi-negotiating with them,” Trump told Axios. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi also threw cold water on peace talks, saying there was “no possibility of restarting negotiations” under current conditions.
Oil prices rose even after Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Asif, told reporters that the US and Iran were “close to some sort of arrangement.” Brent crude futures (BZ=F), the global benchmark, hovered around $88 per barrel.
The persistently high oil prices and an unclear path to end the war built anticipation toward Wednesday’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) report. After Friday’s softer-than-expected jobs report, bets have shifted toward a Federal Reserve rate hike in September, with Cleveland Federal Reserve president Beth Hammack telling Yahoo Finance on Monday that it may take more than one rate hike to rein in inflation.
At the same time, new fundraising efforts by Intel (INTC), Nvidia (NVDA), and others are renewing scrutiny into the capital-intensive AI build-out. Earnings from cloud computing company CoreWeave (CRWV) and AI server maker Super Micro Computer (SMCI) after the bell are expected to provide insight into the health of the AI hardware business.
