NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices are sinking again Tuesday and pulled back below $80 per barrel for the first time since early March, while the U.S. stock market drifts near its all-time high.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.2% following a rally that’s brought it back within 1% of its record set earlier this month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 502 points, or 1%, as of 12:46 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.5% lower.
With optimism continuing that a tentative U.S.-Iran deal on their war will reopen the Strait of Hormuz at the end of the week and get the global flow of oil going again, the price for a barrel of Brent crude fell 5.4% to $78.66.
Significant hurdles remain in the negotiations, including what to do with Iran’s nuclear program. But the hope on Wall Street is that this agreement will mean a long-term fix to a conflict that has worsened inflation around the world. The price of Brent has come down sharply from its $100-plus level of a few weeks ago, though it could still take months for the energy industry to get back to full speed.
On Wall Street, stocks benefiting from the boom in artificial-intelligence technology were weighing on the market following their vicious swings over the last couple weeks. They have been leading the market up and down amid worries that their stock prices shot too high, too quickly in the mania around AI. That’s taken a toll because chip companies and other AI winners have grown so big that they’ve become some of Wall Street’s most influential stocks.
Drops of 1.7% for Nvidia and 3.5% for Micron Technology were the two heaviest weights pulling the S&P 500 lower.
On the winning side of Wall Street was SpaceX, which rose 12.8% toward a third straight gain since its debut on the U.S. stock market.
