Dow Jones drops nearly 500 points late at night, Chinese concept stocks mostly decline, Pony.ai falls 6%, and over 120,000 cryptocurrency traders get liquidated.

Ask AI · How does the escalation of the Middle East conflict disrupt global capital markets?

On March 27, all three major U.S. stock indexes opened lower and trended down across the board. As of the time of writing, the Dow Jones is down 1.07%, the S&P 500 is down 0.97%, and the Nasdaq is down 1.34%.

Large-cap technology stocks fell more than they rose. Tesla, Microsoft, and Amazon all fell by more than 2%.

Ahead of the bell, storage-chip stocks—broadly down—opened stronger. Among them, SanDisk rose by more than 4% at one point, Western Digital rose by more than 2%, while Micron Technology and Seagate Technology rose by more than 1%.

U.S. network security concept stocks fell broadly. Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, and Zscaler all fell by more than 5%, while Okta fell by more than 4%.

China concept stocks fell broadly. The Nasdaq China Golden Dragon Index fell by 0.81%. Among popular individual stocks, Xiaomai Zhixing fell by more than 6%, WeRide fell by more than 5%, Kingsoft Cloud fell by more than 4%, and Bawang Chaji and Alibaba both fell by more than 1%.

Spot gold rose 1.67% to $4,453 per ounce; spot silver rose 0.65%, with the latest price at $68.5 per ounce.

International crude oil futures continued to climb. U.S. oil rose by more than 3% at one point, moving above $97 per barrel. Brent’s gain was approaching 3%, and the latest was $104.3 per barrel. In its latest research report, Goldman Sachs raised its energy price forecasts, expecting that during the remaining time in 2026, crude oil prices will rise by more than 20%, natural gas prices will rise by more than 30%, and risks will still be skewed upward.

Mingming, Chief Economist at CITIC Securities, told a reporter from 21st Century Economic Herald that since the U.S. is an energy powerhouse, the impact of the U.S.-Iran conflict on it is relatively limited compared with countries such as Asia and Europe. However, the rise in crude oil prices will still raise price pressure on U.S. gasoline and other prices, thereby delaying expectations for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, pushing up U.S. Treasury yields, and further increasing pressure from America’s fiscal deficit. See details>>

On the cryptocurrency front, losses in major coins widened further. Bitcoin is down by more than 5%, with the latest at $66,000 per coin. Coinglass data shows that over the past 24 hours, more than 120,000 people across the entire market were liquidated.

CCTV International News, citing Iran’s Mehr News Agency, reported on March 27 that the U.S. and Israel carried out airstrikes on Iran’s Khuzestan Steel Plant and Isfahan Mubarak Steel Plant. The power plant associated with Mubarak Steel Plant was also targeted.

Also, according to Xinhua News Agency, Israeli Defense Minister Katz said on March 27 that Israel’s strikes on Iran will “escalate.” Katz said that at a situation assessment meeting with commanders of the Israel Defense Forces that day, he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “had warned the Iranian regime to stop firing missiles at Israeli civilians,” but missile launches were still continuing; therefore, the Israel Defense Forces “will escalate strikes on Iran and expand the scope of the strikes to targets that assist the regime in manufacturing and using weapons against civilians.”

(Statement: The article is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice. Investors act based on this, and risk is borne by the investor.)