In brief – Brent crude rose 2.6% to $111.66 a barrel, its highest in five months, as the Nasdaq fell 1.5% and the S&P 500 lost 0.8% by mid-morning in New York. – South Korea’s Kospi fell 3.52%, Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 2.65% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 3.03%, a week after…
e Kospi’s 7.57% plunge on Oct. 15. – The 10-year Treasury yield stood at 5.03%, up from 3.97% before the Iran war, with the Fed’s next rate decision due Oct. 28. Brent crude, the global benchmark price for oil, jumped 2.6% to $111.66 a barrel on Thursday, its highest level in five months, as AI-linked stocks slid and dragged markets lower from Asia to Wall Street
By mid-morning in New York, the Nasdaq, an index heavy with tech companies, was down 1.5% and the S&P 500, which tracks 500 of the largest US companies, had lost 0.8%. Nvidia, the largest US company by market value, fell 2.3% and weighs so heavily on the S&P 500 that its slides reach the index funds inside many retirement accounts. Gasoline prices jumped 9.1% in September alone, which means the same oil shock rattling the stock market is already showing up at the pump.
South Korea’s Kospi, the country’s benchmark stock index, fell 3.52% to 5,533.77 after a recovery yesterday, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 2.65% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 3.03%. China’s CSI 300, which tracks 300 large companies listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen, entered a bear market, the term for a fall of 20% or more from a recent peak. The selloff followed the Kospi plunging 7.57% in a single session on Oct. 15 that local coverage dubbed “Black Thursday,” triggering a circuit breaker, an automatic trading pause meant to calm panic selling.