<body><p>STORY: U.S. stocks ended lower on Monday, with the Dow losing about a quarter of a percent, the S&P 500 falling roughly eight-tenths of a percent and the Nasdaq dropping more than one-and-a-half percent.</p><p>:: Archive</p><p>Oil prices jumped after President Donald Trump announced he would reinstate a blockade on Iranian ports in the latest escalation of U.S.-Iran hostilities.</p><p>Alexander Morris is CEO and chief investment officer of F/m Investments.</p><p>"Anyone watching the market today is really seeing what happens when there is confusion in the market, of information. We have a weekend where we think that Iran is sorting itself out, and then the blockade is back on. The ceasefire is teetering, but we're shooting at each other. Confusion is back. The dollar is down. The [yield] curve is up. It seems like the market is starting to price back in the fact that any of the good news bits that we had previously thought might be the start of the end are actually maybe just the end of the beginning."</p><p>Chip stocks, which have tended to lead the market through both rally and selloff, slid on Monday, with SanDisk, Marvell Technology and Intel dropping between about 6% and 12.5%.</p><p>And after a stellar Nasdaq debut on Friday, U.S.-listed shares of South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix sank more than 9%.</p><p>On the flip side, energy stocks led the gainers, as crude prices surged more than 9%. Shares of Chevron added more than 3% while Exxon Mobil climbed 4%.</p><p>Higher oil costs fueled worries that strained supply and upward price pressures could broaden into long-term, systemic inflation.</p><p>To that end, the Labor Department is expected to release its consumer and producer price indexes this week, which will give markets and the Federal Reserve a glimpse at the extent to which the on-again-off-again U.S.-Iran war affected price growth in June.</p></body>
