Global Market Sell-Off: Brent Crude Rockets Past $100 Over Hormuz Crisis; Fed Interest Rate Fears Intenisify

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The ongoing maritime conflict between the US and Iran is casting a severe shadow over global macroeconomic stability. International oil benchmarks have reacted sharply, with Brent Crude officially surging past the $100 per barrel threshold, sending a wave of panic selling across global equity indices.

Market Reaction & Indices Performance:

• Wall Street Sharp Correction: Wall Street indexes have sharply retreated from historical highs. Driven by a 60% probability spike of another Federal Reserve interest rate hike and surging input energy costs, the Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 0.77%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite shed 0.64% in late-session trading.

• Asian and Indian Equities Slide: Tracking weak global cues, Asian equity indexes, along with India’s Sensex and Nifty benchmarks, opened significantly lower for the third consecutive session, with heavy capital outflows observed in the banking, IT, and financial sectors.

• Safe-Haven Flight to Gold: As systemic inflation worries escalate, institutional investors are aggressively reallocating capital into safe-haven assets, prompting Spot Gold to jump over 1% to trade near $4,394 per ounce.