NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices rose another 3% Wednesday as fighting continues in the war with Iran.
Oil prices have climbed as fighting across the Middle East keeps oil tankers from using the Strait of Hormuz to exit the Persian Gulf and delivering to customers. Normally, a fifth of all oil and natural gas traded in peacetime passes through the narrow strait.
The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international standard, rose 3.1% to $93.83. That's up from less than $72 early this month, which is roughly where it was before the war with Iran. Early Wednesday morning, it briefly topped $95 per barrel to touch its highest price in nearly six weeks.
The auto club AAA said Wednesday that the average price for a gallon of regular gas in the U.S. jumped again overnight to $4.06. That's still below highs of around $4.56 per gallon in May, but it had been below $3 before the United States and Israel attacked Iran in late February.
Rising oil prices are threatening a reacceleration of inflation, just as increases for prices were slowing more than economists expected. That in turn could push the Federal Reserve and other central banks to raise interest rates, which would slow economies and undercut prices for stocks and other investments.
The S&P 500 was virtually unchanged, coming off its best day in three weeks, after swinging between modest losses and gains at the start of trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 175 points, or 0.3%, as of 10:15 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% lower.
The majority of stocks in the S&P 500 was rising after more companies reported strong profits for the spring. Expectations are high generally, and companies will need to match them after their stock prices already neared records on anticipation for them.
Investors are looking for signs that all the billions of dollars going into processors, computer memory and other building blocks of the AI boom are producing the kinds of productivity and profits that would make the investments worth if. If that isn't the case, stocks of chip companies and other AI winners would look very expensive following their rushes higher.
Such worries have kept AI stocks at the center of Wall Street's swings for weeks.
Super Micro Computer soared 21.4% after the seller of AI servers said it expects to report stronger profit margins for the latest quarter than it had earlier forecast. It, though, also said that revenue will likely come in at the low end of its forecasted range of $11 billion to $12.5 billion.
They helped offset a 7.3% drop for GE Vernova, which reported a weaker profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
Micron Technology swung between a loss of 3.6% and a gain of 0.8% Wednesday morning. That's after it jumped 14.4% in the first two days of this week to reclaim nearly all its 13.3% plunge from the week before. It's still up roughly 240% for the year so far.
