NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices swung Monday after a scare overnight where prices popped and then moderated, and the yo-yo moves kept stock markets worldwide unsettled.

The S&P 500 edged up by 0.1% in morning trading after flipping between modest gains and losses. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 187 points, or 0.4%, as of 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, while the Nasdaq composite was down 0.1% but remained near its all-time high set last week like the S&P 500.

The center of the action recently has been the world’s bond markets, where climbing yields have cranked up the pressure on economies and stock markets worldwide. Higher yields make it more expensive for households and businesses to borrow, which U.S. homebuyers are all too familiar with because of higher mortgage rates.

Higher interest rates could also make it more difficult for companies to borrow to build huge data centers for artificial-intelligence technology, which has been driving much of the U.S. economy’s growth.

Yields have been climbing for several reasons, and at the top of them have been oil prices. The war with Iran has trapped many oil tankers in the Persian Gulf instead of delivering crude to customers worldwide, which in turn has driven up crude’s price.

The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international standard, got as high as $112 overnight after President Donald Trump told Iran on his social-media platform Sunday that “the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them.”

But prices eased later in the morning, with hopes still remaining that the two sides can reach a deal that would get oil flowing worldwide again. The price for a barrel of Brent crude fell back to $108.75, down 0.5% from Friday, though that's still well above its roughly $70 price from before the war.

That drop in oil prices helped boost stock markets that hadn’t finished trading yet, and France’s CAC 40 index went from a loss of 1.2% to a gain of 0.6%. By that point, Japan’s Nikkei 225 had already finished 1% lower, with Hong Kong's Hang Seng down 1.1%.

On Wall Street, Dominion Energy pushed upward on the U.S. stock market after NextEra Energy agreed to buy it in an all-stock deal to create the world’s largest regulated electric utility by market value. Dominion rallied 10%, and NextEra fell 5%.

Boston Scientific climbed 5% after saying it would spend $2 billion on its previously announced stock buyback program of $5 billion by the end of June. Such purchases send cash directly to investors and boost the company’s per-share earnings.

Source: WPLG