Oil prices fell on Friday amid signs that ships were continuing to move through the Strait of Hormuz despite Iran attacking a container ship the day before.
The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, fell 4.3 percent to $71.99 a barrel, just below levels not seen since before the war in Iran. West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, fell to $69.23 a barrel, just above its prewar level.
Trading has been jittery as some crude prices have nudged below prewar levels, veering between sharp increases and declines, especially after Iran’s military struck a container ship in the strait on Thursday, prompting U.S. retaliatory strikes on Iran on Friday. The attacks were a reminder of the risk that remains to ships passing through the crucial waterway.
Still, traffic through the strait, around which hundreds of ships are stranded, had picked up markedly in the past week. Negotiators for the United States and Iran agreed to a 60-day period of talks, while pledging to cease hostilities.
U.S. gasoline prices fell again on Friday, sliding 2 cents to a national average of $3.90 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club. Gas prices don’t move in lock step with crude, usually trailing increases or drops by a few days. The average price at the pump has risen more than 30 percent since the war began.
Stock markets fell on Friday in a continuation of sharp volatility in technology shares. The S&P 500 inched lower, taking the index to a 2 percent drop for the week. Jittery investors continue to wrestle with whether the boom in artificial intelligence spending is all but done or just beginning.
OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is leaning toward holding off its initial public offering until next year, as the A.I. giant’s executives shift away from their most aggressive aspirations. The newly listed shares of SpaceX have slid in recent sessions, which could dampen enthusiasm for other blockbuster offerings.
Adding to investors’ concerns, Apple said Thursday that it had raised prices on Macs and iPads, blaming rising costs for memory and storage chips caused by a surge in A.I. demand. “The news played into broader concerns that A.I. data centers were generating inflationary pressures,” analysts at Deutsche Bank wrote in a research note.
In Asia, South Korea’s KOSPI fell 5.8 percent, capping a bruising week. The benchmark index has become a proxy for investor sentiment about A.I. The country’s two chip giants — Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix — have outsize influence in dictating the direction of the broader market. Shares of Samsung dropped 5 percent, while SK Hynix fell 8 percent.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell nearly 5 percent, while shares in Taiwan fell 3 percent. Also, stock markets in Hong Kong and mainland China were lower.
In Europe, the Stoxx 600, a broad index that tracks the region’s largest companies, fell 0.7 percent, ending the week flat to where it started.
