Oil prices rose Monday as the war with Iran threatens to drag on, but US stocks nevertheless inched to more records.
- The S&P 500 rose 13.91 points, or 0.2%, to 7,412.84.
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 95.31 points, or 0.2%, to 49,704.47.
- The Nasdaq composite rose 27.05 points, or 0.1%, to 26,274.13.
The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil climbed 2.9% to top $104 Monday after President Trump said the US-Iran ceasefire
was on "life support" after he rejected Iran's latest proposal to end their war, the
AP reports. That keeps the two sides in limbo, one that has already driven the price of Brent up from roughly $70 before the war.
The rejection raises the stakes for Trump's trip this week to China, where he could urge President Xi Jinping to pressure Iran into making concessions. Xi has leverage because China is the biggest buyer of Iran's sanctioned crude oil. The war has already sent the price for a barrel of Brent up from roughly $70 and delivered a blast of painful inflation through the global economy. That's because it has shut the Strait of Hormuz and kept oil tankers stuck in the Persian Gulf instead of delivering crude to customers worldwide. Still, the US stock market has been setting records recently on hopes that the war will not keep oil prices high for very long, and companies are producing even bigger profits than analysts expected.
On Wall Street, Mosaic helped drag on the market after the fertilizer company reported much weaker results for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The company is benefiting from higher prices for its products, but it's also contending with much higher prices for sulfur and other raw materials because of logistics snarls created by the war with Iran. Mosaic's stock fell 1.8%. Stocks of companies whose customers have the least cushion to absorb higher gasoline prices struggled, and Dollar General fell 7.6%. Businesses with big fuel bills likewise had sharp losses, including drops of 4.3% for Royal Caribbean and 3.2% for Southwest Airlines. More stocks within the S&P 500 sank than rose.
Helping to offset that was Fox, which climbed 7.6% after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Outside of earnings reports, Beazer Homes USA soared 34% after Dream Finders Homes offered to buy it in a deal valued at roughly $704 million. A combination would create the country's seventh-largest homebuilder, and Dream Finders is asking Beazer's shareholders to push its management and board to OK the deal after making several attempts itself. Dream Finders rose 5%. Tech stocks were also strong. Gains of 2% for Nvidia and 6.5% for Micron Technology were the strongest forces pushing the S&P 500 upward.
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