TOKYO: South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index rose sharply in early trade Tuesday (Mar 10), rebounding more than 5 per cent after a drop in oil prices.
Japan’s Nikkei also jumped more than 3 per cent, recovering after a sharp drop the previous day, tracking Wall Street movements overnight.
Markets made their remarkable reversals during the last hour of Wall Street’s trading after President Donald Trump told CBS News that he thinks “the war is very complete, pretty much”.
That calmed worries that had built earlier in the morning, when the price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, briefly touched US$119.50, their highest since 2022.
Those prices fell to under US$90 late Monday, but that is still much higher than the roughly US$70 a barrel crude was selling for before the US and Israel launched the war against Iran on Feb 28.
Trump told reporters in Florida on Monday that his administration was lifting sanctions on some countries as part of efforts to stabilise the oil market, but declined to provide details.
“So we have sanctions on some countries. We’re going to take those sanctions off until the Strait is up,” he said.
Easing sanctions on Russia would potentially boost world supplies of oil at a time of massive disruptions to Middle East shipments from the expanding Iran conflict. But it could also complicate US efforts to deprive Russia of revenue for its war in Ukraine.
