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Oil Prices Climb as US Prepares for Blockade of Iran's Ports
Brent Crude Rises Toward $100.49 a Barrel
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NEW YORK — Oil prices are back around $100 per barrel on April 13 after21 hours of ceasefire talksfailed to endthe U.S.-Iran war. But U.S. stocks are nevertheless holding steady in an indication that Wall Street still sees a chance to avoid a worst-case scenario for the global economy.
The S&P 500 rose 0.3% in midday trading after erasing an earlier dip. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 41 points, or 0.1%, as of 12:45 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.5% higher.
There is more concern in energy markets with crude rising more than 3%. But even there, prices pared earlier spikes as the morning progressed. The moves are much more modest overall than theextreme swingsthat havehit financial marketssince the war began in late February.
After weekend talks failed,President Donald Trumpannounced ablockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a maneuver that raises the pressure on Iran by trying to prevent it from making money by selling oil.
A blockade would keep even more oil off the global market, after prices already jumped for everyone worldwide because of Iran’s restrictions on traffic in the importantstrait. That narrow waterway is how much of the oil produced in the Persian Gulf area reaches customers worldwide.
Iran responded by threatening all ports in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.
the verdict is in- gas prices are likely to return to climbing with Trump's new Strait block- with price cycling states likely to hike gas prices very soon- as early as tomorrow- for many areas as oil prices surge past $100/bbl again. RBOB pointing to big surge in wholesale tmrw — Patrick De Haan (@GasBuddyGuy)
“Security in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman is either for everyone or for NO ONE,” the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting reported April 13. “NO PORT in the region will be safe,” according to a statement from the Iranian military and the Revolutionary Guards.
The price of Brent crude, the international standard, rose back to $100.49 per barrel and is well above its roughly $70 price from before the war. But it remains below the $119 peak it has touched at times, when worries about the U.S.-Iran war have been at their heights. It also pulled back from its nearly $104 price reached earlier in the morning.
“Markets are taking some encouragement from the fact that the two sides are talking and that the broader ceasefire seems to be holding, for now,” according to Sameer Samana, head of global equities and real assets at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.
And, as with so many pronouncements made so far in the U.S.-Iran war, much will depend on the details of the blockade and exactly what gets restricted.
“Not all blockades are created the same,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist at Annex Wealth Management.
Trump said April 13 on his social media platform that “34 Ships went through the Strait of Hormuz yesterday, which is by far the highest number since this foolish closure began.”
In the meantime, big U.S. companies are beginning to tell investors how much money they made during the first three months of the year. Strong reports could help make up for worries about the Strait of Hormuz on Wall Street because stock prices tend to follow the trend of corporate profits over the long term.
Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, said it made $5.63 billion in profit during the quarter, more than investors expected. But financial analysts pointed to some potentially concerning signals underneath the surface, including lower revenue from the trading of fixed income, commodities and currencies. Its stock fell 2.2%.
Big banks traditionally lead earnings reporting season each quarter, and Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America will all report later this week. So will Johnson & Johnson, Netflix and PepsiCo.
Helping to lead Wall Street was Sandisk, which jumped 6.7% after learning it will replace Atlassian Corp. in the Nasdaq 100 index before trading begins on April 20. It will get included in such funds that track the index as Invesco's QQQ, which controls nearly $395 billion in investments.
Oracle's gain of 10.2% was the biggest in the S&P 500, which helped it recover some of its sharp loss for the year so far on worries that it may be spending too much to build up its artificial intelligence capabilities.
Different kinds of worries about AI have been hammering software companies, raising the risk that their businesses may become obsolete. They also rallied to recover some of their big recent losses. ServiceNow climbed 6.6% to trim its loss for the year so far to 42.2%, and AppLovin climbed 6.2% to get its loss for 2026 down to 38.3%.
In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady. The yield on the 10-year Treasury remained at 4.31%, where it was late April 10.
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Yields have largely been on the rise since the war began because of worries about high oil prices and inflation. That in turn has sent uprates for mortgages, which has hurt thehousing market. A report on April 13 said that sales of previously occupied homes wereweaker in March than economists expected.
In stock markets abroad, indexes fell across much of Europe and Asia. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.9%, and South Korea's Kospi dropped 0.9% for two of the world’s larger losses.
“The outcome of the talks was not really what people were hoping for, that’s for certain,” Neil Newman, Managing Director, Head of Strategy at Astris Advisory Japan, said in Hong Kong about the U.S.-Iran negotiations.
“As we stand here at the moment, it doesn’t look very nice. Certainly, the oil prices are a big concern.”
AP journalists Yuri Kageyama, Matt Ott and Mayuko Ono contributed to this report.
