US stocks drifted higher in hesitant trading on Monday, ahead of a deadline that President Donald Trump has set to bomb Iranian power plants.
The S&P 500 rose 0.4%, coming off its first winning week in the last six. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 165 points, or 0.4%, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.5%.
Oil prices likewise rose after seesawing through the day amid uncertainty about what will happen in the war with Iran and how long it will slow the global flow of oil and natural gas. Iran rejected the latest ceasefire proposal on Monday and instead said it wants a permanent end to the war.
"We won't merely accept a ceasefire," Mojtaba Ferdousi Pour, head of the Iranian diplomatic mission in Cairo, told The Associated Press. "We only accept an end of the war with guarantees that we won't be attacked again."
Trump’s latest deadline
Fighting continued in the war, meanwhile, including an Israeli attack on an Iranian petrochemical plant. And in the background was the clock ticking toward a deadline, one that Trump has moved multiple times, where he has threatened to attack Iranian power plants if it does not open the Strait of Hormuz. A fifth of the world's oil typically sails through the strait during peacetime.
On Monday Trump suggested that his latest deadline of Tuesday at 8 pm Eastern time will be the final one, saying he'd already given enough extensions. "The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night," Trump said.
Surprise jump in US employment figures
Monday also offered the first chance for US stock prices to react to a report from Friday that said US employers hired more workers last month than economists expected. The unemployment rate unexpectedly improved.
They're encouraging signals for an economy that's had to absorb painful leaps in costs for petrol since the war's beginning. The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline is nearly $US4.12 across the country, according to motorist group the AAA. It was below $US3 a few days before the United States and Israel launched attacks to begin the war in late February.
For countries that don't produce as much oil as the United States, the pain has been even worse. That's because they are more reliant on oil coming from the Middle East, and the war has blocked in much of the crude produced in the Persian Gulf area. That oil typically gets to customers around the world by exiting the Strait of Hormuz.
The price for a barrel of benchmark US crude rose 0.8% to settle at $US112.41 after erasing an earlier modest dip. Brent crude, the international standard, added 0.8% to $US109.77 per barrel and remains well above its roughly $US70 price from before the war.
Big Tech stocks rise and fall
On Wall Street, a split performance for the Big Tech stocks that dominate the U.S. market kept things in check. Apple rose 1.1%, and Amazon added 1.4%. Tesla slid 2.2%, and Microsoft fell 0.2%.
Bank stocks were strong, including a 1.3% rise for JPMorgan Chase.
CEO Jamie Dimon said in his annual letter to shareholders released on Monday that the US economy continued to be resilient, and businesses still looked healthy. But he also acknowledged that prices for stocks and other assets were high, which could imply "anything less than positive outcomes could have a dramatic impact on global markets".
All told, the S&P 500 rose 29.14 points to 6,611.83. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 165.21 to 46,669.88, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 117.16 to 21,996.34.
The Associated Press
