North American stock markets opened lower on Thursday as oil prices rose and Treasury yields rose again amid the ongoing standoff between Iran and the US.
High yield has a slow economy and is weighted towards stock prices, cryptocurrencies and all types of investments. Besides raising mortgage rates, they could also reduce corporate borrowing to build the intelligence data centers that have been underpinning recent US economic growth.
The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond US30YT=RR, seen as a barometer of geopolitical risk and fiscal risk, ended up 1.7 bps at 5.139 percent. It briefly touched 5.197 percent on Tuesday, the highest since July 2007 before the global financial crisis.
The S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq each fell about half a percent shortly after the market opened.
Meanwhile, the Toronto Stock Exchange was in the red by about a quarter of one percent.
Shares in Walmart fell more than six percent after the grocery giant delivered another quarter of impressive sales but gave a weaker-than-expected outlook. Walmart is dealing with Americans who have grown increasingly wary about where they spend their money with inflation taking a bigger toll on paychecks, especially since the Iran war began in late February.
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Nvidia swung between narrow gains and losses overnight after the artificial intelligence chip maker's latest quarterly results beat Wall Street expectations again.
Strong demand for its high-end AI chips drove revenue up 85 percent over the period and profits tripled, the company said after the market closed on Wednesday.
Oil prices rose early on Thursday, after a day's drop of 5 percent. Brent crude, the international standard, gained about $4 to about $109 per barrel, while US WTI crude added $4 to $102 per barrel.
Brent remains well above its level of around $70 since before the war with Iran. Prices have been steady on rising hopes that the United States and Iran could reach an agreement to end their conflict and allow oil deliveries to resume entirely from the Persian Gulf to customers around the world.
Treasury yields resumed their rise after easing earlier in the day and gave markets a lift. The 10-year Treasury yield retreated to 4.60 percent early Thursday after slipping to 4.57 percent the previous day. They were up 4.67 percent earlier this week.
The 10-year Treasury yield has been rising from less than 4 percent before the war with Iran began, along with other government obligations around the world, due to concerns that the conflict would keep oil prices high, among other factors.
Yields fell on Wednesday after US President Donald Trump said peace talks with Iran were in their final stages, following a sell-off in US and global bond markets earlier this week and last week.
– Via files from Reuters and Global's Ariel Rabinovitch
© 2026 The Canadian Press
