CNBC Daily Open: Soft landing hit by minor turbulence

This report is from today’s CNBC Daily Open, our international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.

U.S. stocks shaken as Hong Kong market rallies
U.S. stocks fell on fears over growing geopolitical tensions. The S&P 500 slipped 0.93%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.41% and the Nasdaq Composite retreated 1.53%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index popped around 5%, propelled by the year’s strongest rally in Hong Kong-listed Chinese property stocks.

Escalating Middle East conflict
Prices of WTI and Brent oil rose around 1.6% during Asian trading hours as conflict escalated in the Middle East. On Tuesday, Israel began a ground offensive in Lebanon and Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on Israel. Analysts told CNBC there’s a chance Israel will hit Iran’s oil infrastructure, which could cause oil to spike to more than $100 a barrel.

Widespread effect of port strike
Members of the International Longshoremen’s Association started striking Tuesday, halting activity at U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast ports, which stretch from Maine to Texas. If the strike drags on, global supply chains and the economy could take a beating. That runs the risk of causing inflation to flare up again.

Risk-off on crypto
Amid this cautious atmosphere, investors pulled back from cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is currently trading at $61,407.21, down from nearly $66,000 on Sunday. Crypto-related companies also struggled on Tuesday. Coinbase tumbled 7.4% and fell around 1% in extended trading.

[PRO] Fund manager’s worst-performing stock
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Just when the coast appeared clear, geopolitical tensions and potential supply chain snarl-ups threaten to turn the soft-landing trajectory into a bumpy one.

Port workers along the U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast started striking Tuesday. At a port in the New York-New Jersey area, around 100,000 shipping containers “are literally in limbo in the port,” said New York Governor Kathy Hochul. 

“A disruption of a week or two will create some backlogs but the broader consequences will be minimal,” said Adam Kamins, economist at Moody’s Analytics.

Should the work stoppage go on for longer, however, “you’re running into businesses that have real shortages and, yeah, they’ll absolutely have to raise those prices,” said Christopher Ball, economics professor at Quinnipiac University.

(Fans of Rao’s pasta sauce need not fear, for now. Piper Sandler wrote that Campbell Soup, which bought Rao’s earlier this year, “has healthy levels of inventory on hand.”)

Meanwhile, oil prices spiked as markets feared Iran, a member of OPEC, would be dragged into a larger conflict in the Middle East. Higher oil prices pose a risk to inflation resurging, or at least slowing less than everyone is hoping for.

With those fears and uncertainties swirling, the Cboe Volatility Index, known as Wall Street’s fear gauge, climbed to 19.3 on Tuesday. It closed at 15.4 a week ago. Major U.S. indexes fell, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq suffering the most as megacaps like Tesla, Nvidia and Apple dropped.

It’s just the first days of the port strike and flare-up in Middle East tensions, however. The classic safe-haven trades, like bonds, gold and the U.S. dollar, aren’t showing up in the prices of those assets yet, noted CNBC’s Steve Liesman.

The best-case scenario would be that recent events are just minor turbulence on the way to a soft landing.

– CNBC’s Jeff Cox, Fred Imbert, Lori Ann LaRocco, Sean Conlon, Alex Harring and Brian Evans contributed to this story.