\n<\/p>\n
Oil prices are on track for their biggest monthly fall since 2020, as investors hoped for an end to the US-Israel war on Iran.<\/p>\n
The price of Brent crude futures, the global benchmark, was down 1.3% on Friday at about $92 and 19% since the end of April.<\/p>\n
The optimism came after Donald Trump circulated a draft peace agreement for the war in Iran among allies.<\/p>\n
The US news site Axios reported that the US and Iran had reached a tentative deal to extend a ceasefire by 60 days, although it added that Trump had yet to agree to the terms. The US vice-president, JD Vance, said a deal was \u201cnot there yet\u201d but \u201cvery close\u201d.<\/p>\n
The war in Iran has lasted 90 days and caused chaos across the global economy after Iran responded by closing the strait of Hormuz to shipping. That shut off a large proportion of exports from the Gulf, one of the world\u2019s key oil-producing regions.<\/p>\n
While the US initially aimed at regime change in Iran, its ambitions appear to have been scaled back to reopening the strait, as well as reaching a deal to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb.<\/p>\n
Henry Allen, of Deutsche Bank, said markets were showing \u201cmounting optimism about an end to the conflict\u201d. He said: \u201cWith oil prices coming down, that\u2019s meant investors have started to price out the more stagflationary outcomes for the global economy, with a clear rally across multiple asset classes.\u201d The phrase stagflation refers to the damaging combination of stagnation in GDP growth and inflationary price increases.<\/p>\n
Markets across Asia rallied on Friday. Japan\u2019s Nikkei 225 rose 2.5% and South Korea\u2019s Kospi gained 3.9%. Hong Kong\u2019s Hang Seng index gained 0.7%, although the performance of stocks in mainland China was more muted. The Shanghai CSI 300 fell by 0.45%.<\/p>\n
In Europe, the UK\u2019s blue-chip FTSE 100 index was up 0.3% on Friday afternoon, while the broader Stoxx Europe 600 gained 0.2%. <\/p>\n
By late morning on Wall Street, the S&P 500 was o.2% higher, the Dow Jones was up 0.6% and the Nasdaq was roughly flat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oil prices are on track for their biggest monthly fall since 2020, as investors hoped for an end to the US-Israel war on Iran. The price of Brent crude futures, the global benchmark, was down 1.3% on Friday at about $92 and 19% since the end of April. The optimism came after Donald Trump circulated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1600,8105,268,269,21437,1889],"class_list":{"0":"post-49871","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-fall","9":"tag-monthly","10":"tag-oil","11":"tag-prices","12":"tag-steepest","13":"tag-track"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49871","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=49871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/49872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}