Stock markets slump amid Iran war as gas prices jump 30% to three-year high
The war in the Middle East has plunged financial markets around the world into turmoil for a second day, with oil and gas prices surging and share indices plummeting days after the US-Israel attack on Iran.After a calm Monday, US stocks fell sharply after trading opened on Tuesday, with the Dow dropping more than 2% before paring back those losses.At Tuesday’s closing, the Dow had dropped 400 points, or 0.8%, while S&P and Nasdaq saw similar dips.Earlier in the day, the London stock market dropped deep into the red, with the FTSE 100 index closing 2.
75% lower, it’s biggest one-day fall since Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariff shock 11 months ago.Almost all listed stocks fell.In Asia, stock markets also tumbled, with Japan’s Nikkei down 3.1% and South Korea’s Kospi plunging 7.2%.
Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, jumped a further 6% to nearly $83 a barrel.The month-ahead UK gas price has jumped by 30%, to 148p a therm, adding to Monday’s 44% surge to reach almost double its levels last week and a three-year high.Soaring global energy prices will jeopardise Rachel Reeves’s plan to conquer inflation and revive sluggish UK economic growth, economists have warned.The pound hit its lowest level against the US dollar in almost three months – falling about 0.8% against the dollar, or about one cent, to $1.
33.Bitcoin fell 2.3%, while gold – which surged on Monday amid a rush into safe haven investments – dropped by nearly 5%, to $5,072 an ounce.UK government borrowing costs also rose on Tuesday morning.The interest rate, or yield, on two-year, 10-year and 30-year bonds all surged by around 10 basis points.
The city anticipates that an interest rate cut is much less likely, given fears of an inflation spike.As the conflict, sparked by US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran since Saturday, has expanded across the region, with Israel launching fresh attacks on Tehran and Beirut on Tuesday, money markets now see just a 29% chance that the Bank of England lowers interest rates at its next meeting, on 19 March.That is down from 80% last week.This will disappoint borrowers hoping for cheaper interest rates, and is a blow to Reeves, who has taken the credit for the six rate cuts since August 2024 and has vowed to tackle the cost of living crisis.The rise in oil and gas prices is expected to drive UK inflation higher, after it fell to 3% in January from 3.
4% in December.Jess Ralston, the head of energy at the research group Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said: “The energy crisis commission warned that the UK remained dangerously underprepared for another energy crisis.“Nobody knows exactly how the next few weeks will play out, but with homes and businesses still facing the debt and after-effects of the last gas crisis, people will understandably be concerned.”The markets also anticipate fewer US interest rate cuts this year.At the end of last week, the swaps markets priced in 61 basis points of cuts by the US central bank, but this has fallen to below 50 points – which would mean fewer than two quarter-point cuts from the Federal Reserve this year.
“Stubbornly high oil and gas prices could impact economies around the world,Specifically, they could be inflationary and disrupt plans to cut interest rates,” said Jemma Slingo, a pensions and investment expert at Fidelity International,The International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday that “disruptions to trade and economic activity surges in energy prices and volatility in financial markets” because the crisis in the Middle East added to an “already uncertain” global environment,However, the ultimate impact will depend on the extent and duration of the conflict,
Pulp have the last word in Adelaide festival saga with triumphant opening gig
Britpop rockers wow crowd and say all voices are ‘important’ in wake of Randa Abdel-Fattah controversyGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast“All voices are important,” the Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker told an adoring crowd in Adelaide on Friday. “All voices should be heard.”Message received. At one point Pulp had pulled out of the opening gig at the Adelaide festival over the Adelaide writers’ week (AWW) furore.But they turned up, they wowed the 10,000-strong crowd, and while Cocker didn’t explicitly say his comment was a reference to the brouhaha around AWW, it was pretty clear
Seth Meyers on Team Trump’s Iran threats: ‘These guys speak like they’ve been hit on the head’
On Thursday night, late-night hosts remarked on the Jeffrey Epstein investigations, the threat of a US attack on Iran and Donald Trump nominating a wellness influencer as the next US surgeon general.Meyers focused on the president’s criticisms of a landmark 2015 deal between Iran and world powers in which the country agreed to curb their nuclear program. “I’ve been making lots of wonderful deals, great deals,” Trump said. “That’s what I do. Never in my life have I seen any transaction so incompetently negotiated as our deal with Iran
How to keep free entry to UK museums and galleries | Letters
I believe that national museums should be free for all. Your report (Is the UK’s golden era of free museum entry coming to an end?, 21 February) quoted me from a Daily Telegraph article that selectively used parts of a much longer interview. I said in principle that people would be willing to pay; however, I then outlined all the reasons this would not work financially, practically and ethically. I do not wish to be represented as a mouthpiece for those who wish to introduce charges.Nick MerrimanHastingleigh, Kent There is an easy answer to the budget difficulties faced by many UK art galleries and museums: identity cards
‘Seems I’m not dead’: Magda Szubanski says she is in remission after treatment for stage four cancer
Magda Szubanski has revealed the “fantastic news” she has finished chemotherapy and is in remission from a rare, aggressive cancer she was diagnosed with nine months ago.Wishing her fans a “Happy Mardi Gras” in a video on Instagram on Friday, Szubanski said: “I wanted to share the fantastic news, which is that I’ve completed chemo, and I am now in remission. So phew, big relief.“It’s not a cure, but because I’ve got a good remission, that hopefully means that I will … keep the cancer at bay for a good long time.”In May the 64-year-old actor and comedian said she had stage four mantle cell lymphoma, an uncommon and aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and said she had shaved her head ahead of treatment
‘The sky’s the limit’: Newcastle Art Gallery unveils its ‘divisive’ $48m expansion with a blockbuster opening show
On Friday night, the Newcastle Art Gallery (NAG) is throwing open its doors and filling the road and park with giant fluffy doughnuts, live music, dancing and art in a free-for-all street party – themed “industrial disco” – that has been 16 years in the making.For the NAG team, and Novocastrians more broadly, this is a significant moment, marking the long-awaited completion of the $48m gallery expansion project, which went from being “very divisive” in the community to something that’s generating “a remarkable buzz and excitement,” according to Jeremy Bath, the CEO of Newcastle city council.Now the largest public gallery in NSW outside of Sydney, it opens with the major exhibition Iconic Loved Unexpected, displaying 500 artworks from its 7,000-strong collection. Displayed over the 13 gallery spaces (eight of which are new, in a floor space that’s more than double that of the 1997 building), it’s a star-studded showcase of the gallery’s $145m collection, including Australian greats Emily Kam Kngwarray, John Olsen, Margaret Preston, Brett Whiteley, Daniel Boyd and Margaret Olley.It’s the headliners who will draw the crowds, but the gallery – led by the NAG director, Lauretta Morton – has been intentional in championing lesser-known local artists, too
Dead-end boys and West End girls: Lily Allen’s greatest songs – ranked!
Ahead of her UK tour and her three nominations at this weekend’s Brit awards, we appraise Allen’s sharp, candid songcraftThe final track of West End Girl is as close as the album’s break-up saga comes to conciliation, which isn’t terribly close (there’s a glancing lyrical reference to fault on both sides). But in its dreamy trip-hoppy backing and the sweetness of its melody lurks something else: a sense of closure.“I ripped off the chorus … and can’t be bothered with the paperwork,” shrugged Allen of Who’d Have Known’s distinct similarity to Take That’s Shine. They let her use it anyway, and understandably so: Who’d Have Known is an entirely lovely drawing of a relationship in its early stages, that seems to gently glow with possibilities.A genuinely great song from Allen’s flawed third album Sheezus, Our Time neatly captures a sense of here-comes-the-weekend anticipation
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