\n<\/p>\n
US stock markets dropped again on Friday, capping off a fourth week of market turbulence as investors worried about the US-Israel war on Iran and its widespread impact on global oil prices.<\/p>\n
The Dow lost over 400 points on Friday, with the S&P 500 slipping 1.5% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq down 2%.<\/p>\n
The biggest losses of the week were seen in the Russell 2000, which tracks the performance of small-cap companies. The Russell 2000 entered correction territory on Friday after dipping 2.7%, meaning the index fell more than 10% from its most recent high. The small cap index is the first of all the major indices to enter correction territory this year.<\/p>\n
Since 28 February, the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq indices have dropped about 7%, 5% and 4.5%, respectively \u2013 still far from correction territory, but dips have become a mainstay over the last few weeks.<\/p>\n
Markets seem particularly attuned to skyrocketing oil prices, which affects everything from shipping trucks and commercial airlines to fertilizer for farming.<\/p>\n
The price of Brent crude oil, the global benchmark, reached $107 a barrel by Friday afternoon, with prices typically hovering around $70 a barrel before the start of the conflict. US crude oil reached $98 a barrel, up from an average of $64 a barrel before March.<\/p>\n
US gas prices at the pump are an average $3.88 a gallon, according to AAA, with averages surging past $5 in states such as California, Washington and Hawaii.<\/p>\n
The strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world\u2019s oil supply typically passes through, remains blocked in retaliation of the US-Israel strikes against Iran. Both sides of the conflict have also targeted key energy infrastructure in the Gulf states and Iran, which could take years to repair.<\/p>\n
After Israel attacked Iran\u2019s South Pars gasfield, Tehran struck Ras Laffan, the world\u2019s largest liquified natural gas (LNG) facility in the world, earlier this week.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump has spent much of the last week attacking US allies for refusing to help the US reopen the strait of Hormuz, calling Nato allies on Friday \u201ccowards\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cCOWARDS, and we will REMEMBER!\u201d the US president wrote on social media, telling reporters later on Friday that \u201cyou don\u2019t do a ceasefire when you\u2019re literally obliterating the other side\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon deployed about 2,200 marines to the Middle East on Friday, though the White House hasn\u2019t specified what missions the deployment will assist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US stock markets dropped again on Friday, capping off a fourth week of market turbulence as investors worried about the US-Israel war on Iran and its widespread impact on global oil prices. The Dow lost over 400 points on Friday, with the S&P 500 slipping 1.5% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq down 2%. The biggest losses<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[23930,2438,84,2884,5965,6399,23465,261,365],"class_list":{"0":"post-47227","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-dip","9":"tag-fourth","10":"tag-iran","11":"tag-markets","12":"tag-stock","13":"tag-straight","14":"tag-usisrael","15":"tag-war","16":"tag-week"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}