A worldwide sell-off of stocks on Tuesday was slamming Wall Street, while oil prices were leaping even higher as worries rose that the war with Iran is widening and may do more sustained damage to the global economy than feared.
The S&P 500 dropped 2% in morning trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1,048 points, or 2.1%, as of 9 a.m. Central time, and the Nasdaq composite was 2.1% lower.
It was just a day ago that U.S. stocks opened with sharp losses, only to recover all of them and end the day with slight gains. But that was with the caveat that oil prices did not jump too high, like to more than $100 per barrel.
On Tuesday, oil prices got closer to that mark and raised more alarms. The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, leaped another 7.5% to $83.58. It was sitting near $70 less than a week ago. A barrel of benchmark U.S. crude, meanwhile, rose 7.6% to $76.64.
Oil prices made the leap as Iran struck the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia, part of a widening of targets that also includes areas critical to the world’s oil and natural gas production. Worries are particularly high about what will happen to the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Iran, a narrow passageway where roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil passes.
Read the full story from the Associated Press.Â
