Asian shares are mixed and oil prices slip as talks on ending Iran war in doubt

The lackluster start to trading Tuesday followed a modest retreat on Wall Street. But U.S. futures edged higher.

With the fate of talks between Iran and the U.S. on ending the war unclear, the price for a barrel of Brent crude oil remained above $95, slipping just 0.4% to $95.10 per barrel.

U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 0.9% to $86.66 per barrel.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 climbed 1.1% to 59,485.54 on strong gains for tech-related companies like Tokyo Electron, which rose 4.4%. Tech and energy giant SoftBank Group Corp. gained 5.5%.

South Korea's Kospi jumped 1.8% to 6,327.73 and Taiwan's Taiex advanced 1.7%.

The Hang Seng in Hong Kong edged 0.1% lower, to 26,382.30 and the Shanghai Composite index lost 0.3% to 4,068.28.

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 declined 0.1% to 8,942.80.

U.S. President Donald Trump attacked critics after a second round of talks with Iran was thrown into doubt by the U.S. Navy’s seizure of an Iranian-flagged cargo ship. Trump said Vice President JD Vance would be going to Islamabad, but the Iranian side made no commitment to more talks.

Oil prices 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.

On Wall Street on Monday, United Airlines sank 2.8%, and American Airlines fell 4.2% after American said it’s not interested in a merger with United. Airline stocks had flown higher last week following a report saying United wanted to combine with its rival.

On the winning side was TopBuild, a distributor of insulation and building products, which jumped 19.4%. QXO is buying it in a deal valued at roughly $17 billion that it said would make it the continent’s second-largest publicly traded building products distributor. Its stock fell 3.1%.

U.S. companies have been reporting big profits for the first three months of 2026, helping to support the market.

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.

About a tenth of companies in the S&P 500 have already reported their results for the start of 2026. Nearly nine out of 10 have delivered a bigger profit than analysts expected, according to FactSet.

If the rest of the companies in the index match analysts’ expectations, overall earnings per share for S&P 500 companies 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 158.98 Japanese yen from 158.82 yen. The euro slipped to $1.1782 from $1.1789.

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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Stan Choe contributed.