Oil futures fell early Thursday while Wall Street rose as stalled US-Iran talks raised doubts over the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and a permanent end to the Iran war.
U.S. markets were marked higher ahead of steel earnings from some of the country's largest technology companies that posted first-quarter results this week.
S&P 500 futures rose 0.4 percent before the opening bell, while Dow Jones Industrial Average futures rose 0.6 percent. Nasdaq futures gained 0.5 percent.
Brent crude for June delivery slipped $1.93 overnight to $108.51 a barrel. That remains unusually high. Before the war began in late February, Brent crude was trading at around $70 a barrel.
Benchmark US crude slipped again, down $2.37 a barrel to $104.51 per barrel, but US gasoline prices continue to tick higher. The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline jumped another 7 cents overnight to $4.30. The price at this point last year was $3.18.
The US continued its blockade of Iranian ports while the Strait of Hormuz was closed, driving up oil prices in recent days. Thursday's reports suggest that US President Donald Trump may have increased hopes that the conflict will end soon.
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“The collapse of negotiations between the US and Iran, and President Trump reportedly rejecting Iran's proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the market has lost hope for any quick resumption of oil flows,” wrote ING Bank strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey in a research note.
Oil prices vary depending on the type of crude oil, where it is sold and under what conditions, in futures contracts. By some measures, Brent has reached its highest level since its peak of $147.50 per barrel in 2008 during the global financial crisis.
In equity trading, Alphabet jumped 7.4 percent overnight after Google's parent company delivered another quarter of stellar growth driven by its investment in artificial intelligence. Those investments, CEO Sundar Photosi said, “light up every part of the business.”
Alphabet earned $62.6 billion, or $5.11 per share, during the January-March period, an 81 percent increase from the same period last year.
Shares of Facebook owner Meta fell nine percent overnight after it posted better-than-expected results but raised its forecast for capital expenditures. The Instagram and Facebook owner earned $26.77 billion, or $10.44 per share, in the January-March period, up nearly 61 percent from $16.64 billion, or $6.43 per share, in the same period last year.
Elsewhere, in midday Europe, Britain's FTSE 100 rose 1.3 percent after the Bank of England kept its key interest rate on hold at 3.75 percent on Thursday as policymakers assessed the economic impact of the war on Iran and Tehran's effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's land passes. The decision was widely expected and coincided with the US Federal Reserve's decision on Wednesday to keep rates unchanged. It was a similar theme in Japan on Tuesday.
France's CAC 40 lost 1.1 percent, while Germany's DAX traded 0.2 percent lower.
Asian stocks fell sharply. Tokyo's Nikkei 225 shed 1 percent to 59,284.92 and South Korea's Kospi fell 1.4 percent to 6,598.87.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 1.3 percent to 25,776.53, while the Shanghai Composite index closed 0.1 percent higher at 4,112.16. China's factory activity in April fell slightly but remained in an expansionary zone for a second month, despite a global energy shock caused by the Iran war, an official survey showed.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was down 0.2 percent at 8,665.80.
Taiwan's Taiex was 1 percent lower and India's Sensex was down 0.5 percent.
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