Stocks in Asia collapse after explosive rise in oil prices

Amid an explosive rally in oil prices on the morning of Monday, March 9, the MSCI Asia-Pacific index collapsed 5.6 percent, the steepest decline since April, Bloomberg calculated.

South Korean and Japanese stocks showed the biggest decline. The main indices of the Tokyo Stock Exchange Nikkei 225 and Topix fell by 6.8% and 5% respectively. South Korean Kospi collapsed by 8%, because of which trading in Seoul had to be temporarily suspended. Among the market outsiders - manufacturers of scarce memory chips Samsung and SK Hynix, they lost more than 10% of the value.

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 fell 3.4 percent, Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 2.6 percent and the Shanghai Composite was down more than 1 percent.

Futures on leading U.S. stock indices point to an impending sell-off: exchange-traded contracts on the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite are down 2.2%, with futures on the S&P 500 and Dow Jones falling slightly less.

Futures on Europe's Euro Stoxx 50 index collapsed nearly 3%.

Oil prices soared by more than 25%, Mark Brent is trading above $116 per barrel, North American WTI is approaching this mark. At the moment, WTI futures were up 30% - the strongest since 1988, according to LSEG data cited by CNBC.

The rally in the oil market has sharply intensified as investors fear that the conflict between the U.S. and Iran, which is already in its second week, could become protracted - the sides seem to be preparing for just that, Bloomberg writes. Iran has appointed the son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the new supreme leader, and U.S. President Donald Trump said that higher energy prices are a "very small price" for "security and peace." Major Middle Eastern oil producers including Kuwait, Iran and the UAE have begun cutting production amid the near closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor