Equity markets across the world again fell prey to the fog of war to trade in the red on Thursday after a rebound the previous day on hopes of de-escalation.
United States President Donald Trump issued a stern warning of sending Iran to the ‘stone age’ if a deal is not reached.
The comments weakened investor confidence of the war ending soon.
Future trade benchmarks in the American market traded lower. Dow Futures and S&P Futures were down by over 1 percent and 1.29 percent, respectively, according to Bloomberg TV, as of 1:30 ET on April 2.
The weak trend was in contrast to the gains in US markets yesterday on the back of Trump indicating an end to the war within three weeks. Dow Jones rose by almost 0.5 percent (224 points), while the S&P 500 rose 0.7 percent (46 points). The Nasdaq also jumped over 1 percent, or 250 points, to close at around 21,840.
Taking cues from Trump’s “stone age” comment, Asian markets plummeted, with Japan’s Nikkei declining over 2.38 percent, or 1,281 points, while South Korea’s Kospi fell over 4.2 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng also fell by 371 points, or almost 1.4 percent.
On the domestic front, India’s Sensex and Nifty also shed Wednesday’s gains. The indices fell over 2.1 percent each in Thursday’s trade.
The sharp decline in equity markets across the world came as the United States President again flipped his posture against Iran, indicating attacks on the Islamic country.
He said that the US would intensify operations in Iran, permanently disabling its ability to project power outside its own borders and preventing it from ever having a nuclear weapon.
“We’re going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks — we’re going to bring them back to the Stone Age, where they belong.”
Yesterday, while Trump had mentioned winding down the war in three weeks, he had not mentioned renewed strikes on Iran.
On Wednesday, he had said the US may exit the war in 2–3 weeks, which raised hopes of a cooling of hostilities and normalisation in trade activities.
