Global stocks slipped on Thursday as the price of Brent crude pushed past $105 (€91) a barrel.
That move followed the Iranian government’s announcement that it was ruling out talks with Washington, dampening expectations of a quick end to the nearly month-long US-Israeli war with Iran.
Dublin
Euronext Dublin underperformed international peers as it finished down 2.7 per cent, dragged by many of its bigger hitters.
The banks led the losses, with AIB down 2.3 per cent and Bank of Ireland slipping 1.1 per cent. PTSB, by the far the smallest of the banks, finished the day down 2.7 per cent.
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Almost the entire index finished the day in the red, with Ryanair slipping 1.3 per cent to finish on €24.83.
Cavan-based insulation specialist Kingspan – the biggest company left on the index by market capitalisation – plummeted 3.8 per cent.
Are Government's fuel measures betting on a quick resolution to the conflict in Iran?
There were similarly significant drops for home builders Glenveagh Properties and Cairn Homes, which were down 2.4 per cent and 2.8 per cent respectively.
London
Stock prices in London closed lower, with the price of oil climbing as doubts grew about talks between the US and Iran, after Iran countered the US peace plan.
The FTSE 100 index closed down 134.67 points, 1.3 per cent, at 9,972.17.
The FTSE 250 ended down 179.38 points, 0.8 per cent, at 21,296.07, and the Aim all-share closed down 10.18 points, 1.4 per cent, at 719.06.
Clothing, footwear and home products retailer Next shares led the FTSE 100 and finished 6.4 per cent higher.
Shares in 3i Group sank 18 per cent as it outlined guidance for 2026 and said its investee Action plans to open its first store in the US by 2028.
The private equity firm said its portfolio company is targeting like-for-like sales growth between 4 per cent and 5 per cent in 2026.
On the FTSE 250 index, shares in Pollen Street closed up 8.9 per cent after it said assets under management increased in 2025.
Next shares rose 4.2 per cent to the top of the benchmark after chief executive Simon Wolfson said the clothing retailer has not seen a noticeable drop-off in UK sales since the war started at the end of February.
Playtech shares fell 12.1 per cent, pushing the stock to the bottom of the midcap index, after the online gambling platform missed revenue estimates for its 2025 fiscal year.
Europe
On the Continent, the Stoxx Europe 600 fell 1.2 per cent, while the Cac 40 in Paris closed down 1 per cent and the Dax 40 in Frankfurt ended 1.5 per cent lower.
Euro zone bond yields rose as energy prices climbed again, with traders growing sceptical over the conflicting claims about the status of any ceasefire talks between the US and Iran.
Germany’s 10-year bond yield, the benchmark for the euro zone, rose 10.5 basis points to 3.06 per cent, after falling 6 basis points on Wednesday on reports of ceasefire talks.
Italian yields rose more than most of their peers, with the 10-year up 16 basis points at 3.99 per cent. That pushed the spread between Italian and German 10-year yields up to 92 basis points.
New York
Wall Street’s main indexes dropped following gains in the previous session, as conflicting signals from the US and Iran on the prospects of a de-escalation in the Middle East kept investors on edge.
A US proposal for ending nearly four weeks of fighting is “one-sided and unfair”, a senior Iranian official told Reuters, while also stressing that diplomacy had not ended despite the current lack of a realistic plan for peace talks.
At midday Irish time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.45 per cent, the S&P 500 lost 0.77 per cent and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.05 per cent.
Jurors in the first two trials from a growing wave of court cases targeting social media firms over harm to children have found Meta and Alphabet’s Google liable, sending their shares down 6.3 per cent and 2.1 per cent respectively, to multimonth lows.
They bogged down the S&P 500 communication services index by 2.4 per cent.
Technology stocks were the biggest weights on the S&P 500, falling 1.2 per cent. Memory chipmakers continued to sell off, with Micron Technology,
SanDisk and western Digital went down between 4 per cent and 7 per cent. The Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index lost almost 2.7 per cent, after three sessions of gains. – Additional reporting: Agencies
