{"id":43531,"date":"2025-06-16T01:05:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T06:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=43531"},"modified":"2025-06-16T03:01:16","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T08:01:16","slug":"asian-shares-are-mixed-and-oil-prices-advance-as-israel-iran-crisis-escalates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=43531","title":{"rendered":"Asian shares are mixed and oil prices advance as Israel-Iran crisis escalates"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">HONG KONG &#8212;&nbsp;Asian shares were mixed on Monday and oil prices extended gains on worries that&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/israel-palestinians-iran-war-latest-06-15-2025-291df01b03179cd414db21ca33791b39\">escalating Iran-Israel tensions<\/a>&nbsp;could disrupt the flow of crude around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">U.S. benchmark crude oil added 20 cents to $73.18 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gained 95 cents to $75.18 per barrel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">In share trading, Tokyo&#8217;s Nikkei 225 added 1.3% to 38,307.74, while the Kospi in Seoul gained 0.9% to 2,920.57.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Chinese markets were little changed after data for May showed stronger consumer spending but weaker factory activity and investment. A 6.1% year-on-year jump in retail sales was offset but lower than expected growth in industrial output, which rose 5.8% from a year earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Hong Kong&#8217;s Hang Seng fell 0.1% to 23,864.20 and the Shanghai Composite Index added less than 0.1% to 3,378.78.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Australia&#8217;s S&amp;P\/ASX 200 fell 0.2% to 8,547.40.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">On Friday, oil prices jumped and stocks slumped after&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/live\/israel-iran-attack\">Israel\u2019s attack on Iranian nuclear and military targets<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The S&amp;P 500 sank 1.1% to 5,976.97. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1.8% to 42,197.79, and the Nasdaq composite lost 1.3% to 19,406.83.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The strongest action was in the oil market, where the price of a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude and Brent crude, the international standard surged more than 7%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Iran is one of the world\u2019s major producers of oil, though sanctions by Western countries have limited its sales. If a wider war erupts, it could slow the flow of Iran\u2019s oil to its customers and keep the price of crude and gasoline higher for everyone worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Beyond the oil coming from Iran, analysts also pointed to the potential for disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, a relatively narrow waterway off Iran\u2019s coast. Much of the world\u2019s oil that&#8217;s been pulled from the ground moves through it on ships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Companies that use a lot of fuel as part of their business and need their customers feeling confident enough to travel suffered some of the sharpest losses. Cruise operator Carnival dropped 4.9%. United Airlines sank 4.4%, and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings fell 5%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">They helped overshadow gains for U.S. oil producers and other companies that could benefit from increased fighting between Israel and Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Exxon Mobil rose 2.2%, and ConocoPhillips gained 2.4% because the leaping price of crude portends bigger profits for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Contractors that make weapons and defense equipment also rallied. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and RTX all rose more than 3%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The price of gold climbed as&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/gold-prices-new-record-trump-tariffs-0082e0040fb6095497ba93ee6454255b\">investors searched for safer places&nbsp;<\/a>to park their cash. An ounce of gold added 1.4% on Friday and was holding steady early Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Prices for Treasury bonds will likewise rise when investors are feeling nervous, but Treasury prices fell Friday, which in turn pushed up their yields, in part because of worries that a spike in oil prices could drive inflation higher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/inflation-economy-trump-tariffs-b0f098351a1f3f850a4c20b215556027\">Inflation<\/a>&nbsp;has remained&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/producer-prices-inflation-economy-trump-tariffs-0a25bf91e2dde5df0d8c131a2d95c816\">relatively tame&nbsp;<\/a>recently, and it\u2019s near the Federal Reserve\u2019s target of 2%, but worries are high that it could be set to accelerate because of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/consumer-prices-inflation-trump-trade-6ea513a44876c2f4dc948a25c15b0eb0\">President Donald Trump\u2019s tariffs<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">A better-than-expected report Friday on sentiment among U.S. consumers also helped drive yields higher. The preliminary report from the University of Michigan said sentiment improved for the first time in six months after Trump put many of his tariffs on pause, while U.S. consumers\u2019 expectations for coming inflation eased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">On Wall Street, Adobe fell 5.3% even though the company behind Photoshop reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than Wall Street expected. Analysts called it a solid performance but said investors may have been looking for some bigger revenue forecasts for the upcoming year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">In currency trading early Monday, the U.S. dollar gained to 144.37 Japanese yen from 144.03 yen. The euro rose to $1.1537 from $1.1533.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/US\/wireStory\/asian-shares-mixed-oil-prices-advance-israel-iran-122881376\">abcnews<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HONG KONG &#8212;&nbsp;Asian shares were mixed on Monday and oil prices extended gains on worries that&nbsp;escalating Iran-Israel tensions&nbsp;could disrupt the flow of crude around the world. U.S. benchmark crude oil added 20 cents to $73.18 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gained 95 cents to $75.18 per barrel. In share trading, Tokyo&#8217;s Nikkei 225 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":43532,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1153],"tags":[30142,30143,10291],"class_list":["post-43531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-military","tag-30142","tag-30143","tag-10291"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43531"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43533,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43531\/revisions\/43533"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}