Oil soars, US stocks end muted on Iran worries with earnings, Fed in focus

NEW YORK/PARIS - Oil prices soared on worries about prolonged supply disruption due to the Middle East war while Wall Street's stock indexes finished little changed on Wednesday ahead of high-profile earnings reports and after a divided Federal Reserve kept interest rates steady but muddied the outlook for easing. 

Investors had mixed initial reactions to financial reports from heavyweight US technology companies with Meta Platforms, Amazon.com, and Microsoft getting frosty receptions while Alphabet shares rallied in late trading. 

US crude settled up 6.95%, or USD 6.95, at USD 106.88 a barrel while Brent settled up 6.08%, or USD 6.77, at USD 118.03 after earlier touching its highest point since June 2022, with little sign of a resolution two months into the US-Israeli war against Iran, which has snarled energy supplies through the Strait of Hormuz.

A White House official said on Wednesday that US President Donald Trump had asked US oil companies about ways to mitigate the impact of a potentially months-long US blockade of Iranian ports. Meanwhile, in the first official estimate of the military price tag for the Iran conflict, a senior Pentagon official said on Wednesday that the war has cost USD 25 billion so far.

Equity trading was choppy after the Fed noted rising concerns about inflation while it drew three dissents from officials who no longer feel the US central bank should communicate a bias towards lowering borrowing costs in its most divided decision since 1992. A fourth dissent at the meeting came in favor of a 25-basis-point rate cut.

Trump nominee Kevin Warsh is expected to replace Jerome Powell as Chair in coming weeks amid the White House's unprecedented efforts to exert control over the world's most powerful central bank.

Chris Grisanti, chief market strategist at Mai Capital Management, said he saw the dissents as a "shot across the bow to incoming Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, who has been a proponent of easing."

"They dissented not to the rate decision, but to easing bias in the statement. This serves two purposes: On its face, it’s more hawkish, and it says we may not be leaning towards easing anymore, so that’s new news," Grisanti said.

Powell, who plans to stay on as a Fed governor after his term as Chair ends in mid-May, said in a press conference that it was easy to see why some Fed officials were against a rate easing bias but that he does not believe officials are leaning toward hiking interest rates . 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 280.12 points, or 0.57%, to 48,861.81, the S&P 500 fell 2.85 points, or 0.04%, to 7,135.95 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 9.44 points, or 0.04%, to 24,673.24. 

MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe fell 1.42 points, or 0.13%, to 1,067.56.

Earlier, the pan-European STOXX 600 index closed down 0.6% with mixed corporate results and data pointing to the economic damage caused by the Iran war.

BOND YIELDS, DOLLAR RISE

US Treasury yields rose to a one-month high after the Fed's hawkish signal of growing inflation concerns.

Zachary Griffiths, head of investment-grade and macro strategy at CreditSights, said that "if Kevin Warsh had hoped to inherit a committee that was willing to cut rates in the near term, that's not what he's getting.” 

The yield on benchmark US 10-year notes rose 7.6 basis points to 4.43%, from 4.354% late on Tuesday while the 30-year bond yield rose 5.7 basis points to 5.0011%.

The 2-year note yield, which typically moves in step with interest rate expectations for the Federal Reserve, rose 10.7 basis points to 3.951%, from 3.844% late on Tuesday.

In foreign exchange markets , the dollar rose against major currencies while traders digested the Fed's update. Juan Perez, director of trading at Monex USA in Washington, said that "in the global perspective, central banking has a lack of consensus, which is actually helping the US dollar."

The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies including the yen and the euro, rose 0.38% to 98.96, with the euro down 0.33% at USD 1.1672.

Against the Japanese yen, the dollar strengthened 0.51% to 160.43, putting Japan's currency closer to levels that have previously triggered intervention, despite the Bank of Japan signaling after its policy meeting on Tuesday that it could raise rates in coming months. 

In precious metals, gold extended the last two sessions' losses and hit its lowest level since March 31. Spot gold fell 1.12% to USD 4,542.83 an ounce.

(Reporting by Sinéad Carew, Laura Matthews, Karen Brettell, Chibuike Oguh, Elizabeth Howcroft, and Gregor Stuart Hunter. Editing by Hugh Lawson, Kirsten Donovan, and Nick Zieminski)