JamzNG Latest News, Gist, Entertainment in Nigeria
Rising oil prices pushed the US stock market further away from its record high on Monday, while adding even higher pressure to the US bond market.
The S&P 500 fell 0.8 percent and gave back most of its gains from last week, which took it to the brink of an all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 372 points, or 0.7 percent, as of 11:45 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was down 1 percent.
Much of the US stock market sank due to a 2.8 percent rise in the market’s most actively traded Brent crude oil contract to US$100.19 a barrel. This eclipsed the gains of Wall Street’s most influential stock, Nvidia, after announcing a historic cash flow to its investors through share buybacks.
Meanwhile, the Toronto Stock Exchange is in the red zone by around 0.75 percent as many companies related to mining gold, silver and other commodities experience difficulties. Agnico Eagle Mines was down about 4.5 percent and Lundin Gold was down about 5.5 percent at the time of publication.
Oil prices have fluctuated amid uncertainty about when a war with Iran will again allow tankers to flow freely through the Strait of Hormuz and deliver oil from the Middle East to customers around the world. The latest changes come after President Donald Trump said over the weekend that he was rejecting Iran’s offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and resume negotiations over its nuclear program.
“I also want to make a deal,” Trump said Saturday. “But that deal is unacceptable.”
Brent oil rose above $101 a barrel early Monday, before the American stock market opened for trading, but it pared its gains as American officials said mediators were still working with Iran and the United States on reaching a deal to end the fighting and open the strait.
Get weekly money news
Get expert insight, Q&A on the markets, housing, inflation and personal finance information delivered to you every Saturday.
Despite the ups and downs, the price of a barrel of Brent remains much higher than the $72 it was priced at before the United States and Israel attacked Iran in late February. This has helped worsen inflation, and the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline rose to nearly $4.48 from $3.13 a year ago, according to AAA.
Concerns about inflation have in turn helped push Treasury yields much higher in the bond market. This puts pressure on the economy because it makes borrowing money more expensive for everyone, and also lowers the prices of shares and other investments.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which is the core of the bond market, jumped to 5.26 percent from 5.17 percent late Friday. This was a big step for the bond market, and 10-year bond yields returned to where they were in 2007, before the financial crisis and Great Recession drove bond yields to near zero.
The 30-year Treasury yield, which jumped to 5.58 percent from 5.49 percent, returned to 2004 levels.
On Wall Street, shares of airlines and other companies with large fuel bills slumped as oil prices rose.
American Airlines fell 3.8 percent, and United Airlines lost 3.6 percent.
Gold miners also weakened after gold prices slumped 3.9 percent. Gold has a reputation for helping protect investors from high inflation, but its price tends to weaken when yields rise, causing bonds to pay investors more interest. Gold struggles to keep up because it doesn’t provide anything to its investors.
Newmont, the Denver-based mining giant, sank 4.4 percent.
One of the biggest losses on Wall Street was MongoDB, which plunged 18.5 percent after the database company said its CEO, Chirantan “CJ” Desai, was stepping down immediately to take a senior role at Meta Platforms.
Those losses helped more than offset Nvidia’s two percent gain. The chip company said it approved a plan to send up to $150 billion more to its shareholders in a share buyback plan, bringing the remaining total of the program to $235 billion.
Nvidia has the clout to do just that after the frenzy around chips used for artificial intelligence technology helped it double the amount of cash on its books in the first half of its fiscal year. The company also on Monday unveiled a new security platform that the chipmaker says can stop artificial intelligence agents from acting maliciously.
AI stocks in general have been under pressure after industry leaders said they needed to slow development to give safety measures time to catch up.
In overseas stock markets, European indices were mixed following weaker performance in most Asian markets.
The index fell 2.7 percent in Seoul and 1.7 percent in Shanghai on two of the world’s biggest moves.
– with files from Ariel Rabinovitch of Global News
© 2026 Canadian Press
