Oil prices slip and Asian shares mostly gain as US-Iran talks still in doubt
Apr 20, 2026, 8:10 PM | Updated: Apr 21, 2026, 6:38 am
Oil prices slipped and Asian shares were mostly higher Tuesday with the future of U.S.-Iran talks aimed at ending the war in doubt.
The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil dipped 1% to $94.44. U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 1.2% to $86.19 per barrel.
U.S. President Donald Trump said Vice President JD Vance would be going to Pakistan’s capital Islamabad for talks. But after the U.S. Navy’s seizure of an Iranian-flagged cargo ship, the Iranian side made no commitment to more negotiations.
In Asian share trading, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 climbed 0.9% to 59,357.74 on strong gains for tech-related companies like Tokyo Electron, which rose 3.2%. Tech and energy giant SoftBank Group Corp. gained 8.2%.
South Korea’s Kospi jumped 2.6% to 6,381.49, and Taiwan’s Taiex advanced 1.8%.
The Hang Seng in Hong Kong gained 0.4% to 26,465.04 and the Shanghai Composite index lost 0.1% to 4,077.27.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 declined 0.1% to 8,943.70.
Oil prices had climbed Monday following the latest rise of tensions between the United States and Iran, but the moves were more modest than they were earlier in the war. U.S. stocks, meanwhile, gave back a bit of their record-breaking rally.
On Monday, the S&P 500 slipped 0.2% from its all-time high and the Dow industrials edged less than 0.1% lower. The Nasdaq composite fell 0.3%.
Worries over disruptions of supplies of oil from the Persian Gulf if Iran continues to block tankers from exiting the Strait of Hormuz are clouding investor sentiment.
The next big deadline is looming on Tuesday night at 8 p.m. Eastern time, which is early Wednesday Tehran time, when a ceasefire agreement between the United States and Iran is scheduled to expire.
“The current dynamic is one of a precarious balance of truce,” Mizuho Bank said in a commentary, so “as the ceasefire draws to its 2-week deadline, the all-consuming question is whether both sides can seize on the talks to land on a US-Iran deal that ends the war.”
For now, oil prices remain well below the $119 per barrel level for Brent crude when fears were at their highest. And the S&P 500 is still above where it was before the war.
Several of the biggest U.S. banks said last week that they see the U.S. economy remaining resilient, particularly because of solid spending by U.S. consumers.
U.S. companies have been reporting big profits for the first three months of 2026, helping to support the market. Nearly nine out of 10 companies that have already reported earnings for January-March posted bigger profits than analysts had expected, according to FactSet.
If the rest of the companies in the S&P 500 match analysts’ expectations, overall earnings per share for companies in the index will end up 13% higher than a year earlier, it estimates.
Other companies scheduled to report their results this week include UnitedHealth Group on Tuesday, Tesla on Wednesday and Procter & Gamble on Friday.
In other dealings early Tuesday, the U.S. dollar rose to 158.88 Japanese yen from 158.82 yen. The euro slipped to $1.1776 from $1.1789.
