(Updates prices)
* Oil surges more than 5%, sending global bond prices
tumbling
* Samsung slides for a second session amid earnings worries
* Dollar steady ahead of Fed minutes due later in the day
By Amanda Cooper and Tom Westbrook
LONDON, July 8 (Reuters) - Oil prices surged more than 5% on
Wednesday while global stocks and bond prices tumbled as
investors fled risk assets after U.S. President Donald Trump
said the memorandum of understanding signed with Iran to end the
Gulf conflict was "over".
Trump, who was speaking in Ankara where he was attending a
NATO summit, added that he did not want to engage with Tehran.
"As far as I'm concerned, it's just a waste of time dealing
with them," he said.
Market sentiment was already fragile after U.S. and Iranian
forces had traded attacks in the Gulf.
Brent crude futures leapt 5%, the most in a day
since late May, to $78 a barrel.
While that was well shy of the peaks above $120 seen at the
height of the conflict, it was enough to inject some fresh
inflation risk into the bond market, particularly since months
of conflict have drawn down global oil inventories.
"It's clearly not what the market's wanted and it really
weighs heavily on sentiment," Chris Beauchamp, chief market
strategist at IG, said.
Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note yields rose for a
seventh day to a one-month high of 4.58%, while in Europe,
yields on German and Italian 10-year
bonds rose by the most in a month to also hit one-month highs at
3.075% and 3.9%, respectively.
Data this week showed crude stocks in the U.S. Strategic
Petroleum Reserve hit their lowest level since 1983, leaving
markets more vulnerable to future supply shocks.
"The main thing is really whether or not the Strait of
Hormuz remains open and we still see traffic (and) whether or
not oil can continue to flow," Khoon Goh, head of Asia research
at ANZ in Singapore, said.
STOCKS DROP
European shares dropped 1.6%, on track for the biggest
one-day drop in the STOXX 600 since mid-March, while
U.S. futures fell 0.9% to 1.3%.
The VIX volatility index jumped nearly 13% in its
largest one-day rise in over a month, although it was still
below the highs in March.
The stock market has already been under some pressure in
recent weeks, as investors are increasingly questioning the
valuations of some of this year's top-performing semiconductor
and AI-linked stocks.
Samsung Electronics ( SSNLF ) shares slid for a second
straight session on Wednesday, despite the company flagging a
19-fold rise in profit. Analysts and investors are concerned
that memory chip demand may slow in the second half of the year.
Over the last couple of weeks, there has been a distinct
shift out of chip stocks and into other parts of the market,
including financials, consumer stocks and back to the so-called
hyperscalers that have dominated market action over the past
year or so.
Samsung's results highlighted how investors are increasingly
questioning valuations as bottlenecks in some parts of the AI
supply chain - such as memory chips or data centres - start to
clear, and pricing for AI models becomes harder to predict.
"What you could see is the market looking for exactly what
the pricing power will be, and that can mean that there are
fluctuations in valuations," said ING chief economist and global
head of research Marieke Blom.
"What we also see is capex spending is - relative to EBITDA
- increasing, which means that the amount of support that can be
given via share buybacks and so forth is coming down. So we may
see pressure on valuations in some parts of the AI chain."
In currency markets, the dollar rose, pushing the euro
to just above $1.14, while the yen hovered around 162.5
, not far from 40-year lows.
Minutes from last month's Federal Reserve meeting are due
later on Wednesday, and traders reckon new Chair Kevin Warsh
might pare back the detail to dampen any policy signal.