HONG KONG — World shares advanced on Friday, tracking big Wall Street gains, while oil prices sank more than 4% after U.S. President Donald Trump claimed there was a breakthrough in talks to end the Iran war.
High oil prices have added to inflationary pressures globally as the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for the world's oil and gas transit, remained largely closed.
Expectations that an agreement between the U.S. and Iran may help reopen the strait sent oil prices tumbling.
Brent crude oil, the international standard, fell 4.5% to $86.31 per barrel. That was still much higher than the roughly $70 a barrel level it was at before the war began in late February.
Benchmark U.S. crude shed 4.3% to $83.90 a barrel.
In share trading, the future for the S&P 500 was 0.2% higher, while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.4%.
Investors in the U.S. and elsewhere were awaiting the debut Friday on Wall Street of SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket company, which is set to become the largest IPO on record, raising around $75 billion.
In early European trading, Germany's DAX picked up 1.8% to 24,654.78, while the CAC 40 in Paris rose 1.9% to 8,356.38. Britain's FTSE 100 added 1.2% to 10,428.98, despite official data that showed its economy contracted by 0.1% in April.
Asian markets logged bigger gains.
South Korea's Kospi jumped 4.6% to 8,123.62, narrowing losses from earlier this month from sell-offs of shares related to artificial intelligence. The Kospi has nearly doubled over the past six months, with a record closing high of 8,801.49 on June 2.
Samsung Electronics, South Korea's most valuable company, advanced 7.9%. Computer chipmaker SK Hynix rose 2.3%.
Tokyo’s Nikkei’s 225 gained 2.8% to 66,020.04, also led by gains for technology stocks. SoftBank Group, a multinational investment holding company with a strong AI focus, was up 1.5%. Chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron jumped 7.3%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 1.7% to 24,658.91 and the Shanghai Composite index rose 1.1% to 4,031.51.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 closed 2% higher at 8,804.00.
Taiwan’s Taiex gained 2.4%, while India’s Sensex advanced 1.4%.
The renewed investor optimism came after Trump said Thursday he had called off military strikes against Iran. He asserted that the U.S. had made "a great settlement of the war with Iran," adding that an extension of the shaky ceasefire between the two sides could be finalized in "the next few days." Few details were offered.
Global markets retreated earlier in the week as tensions between the U.S. and Iran escalated.
“Trump has said many times before that a deal is very close, only for hostilities to resume,” ING commodities analysts Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote in a note on Friday. “However, there does appear to be more positive noise around the deal this time.”
“(But) we would be cautious about assuming that the extension of the ceasefire is a done deal,” they added. “Even if it is, it could be fragile.”
On Thursday, Wall Street's benchmark S&P 500 surged 1.8% to 7,394.30, back to where it was in early May. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied 1.9% to 50,848.75, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite climbed 2.5% to 25,809.66.
Prices of AI and other tech stocks have been volatile the past week in part due to renewed worries that massive investments and soaring share prices are creating a bubble liable to burst. On Thursday, U.S. chipmaker Marvell Technology climbed 11.1%, but technology company Oracle lost 8.5% on worries over its high spending, despite strong-than-expected quarterly results.
In other dealings early Friday, the U.S. dollar rose to 160.04 Japanese yen from 159.93 yen. The euro was trading at $1.1580, up from $1.1578.
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