The Ibex 35 opens with slight losses, awaiting developments in the Middle East and oil prices.

BarcelonaThe Spanish stock market opened this Wednesday with a slight loss of 0.14%, reaching 17,420 points. This will be another day in which investors will continue to monitor the conflict in the Middle East and the evolution of oil prices, but other data will also have an impact, such as Inditex's record results and the US inflation figures. The Ibex 35, Spain's main index, closed Tuesday's session with a 3.05% gain, reaching 17,445 points. In the first minutes of trading, it was Inditex, Spain's largest listed company, that showed the strongest performance. The company founded by Amancio Ortega surged 5.11% after announcing a profit of €6.22 billion for its 2025 fiscal year, representing a 6% increase compared to last year and marking its fourth consecutive year of record results.

The rest of the major European stock exchanges began Wednesday's session with sharper declines. London's FTSE 100 fell 0.63%, while Paris's CAC40 dropped 0.82%, and Frankfurt's DAX declined 1.12%.

After closing Tuesday at $87.6 per barrel, the price of Brent crude, the European benchmark, remained below $90 on Wednesday morning, although it is approaching that level. However, it is still far from the $118 it reached last Monday, as investors await confirmation of the de-escalation of the conflict that US President Donald Trump has been announcing for days. Nevertheless, it remains above the $72 mark it held before the attack on Iran. Meanwhile, the price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude, the US benchmark, is above $85 a barrel. The volatility in oil prices is due to the blockade Iran is imposing on the Strait of Hormuz in response to the bombings. Located between Oman and Iran, Hormuz is the world's main oil and gas shipping route. Around one in five barrels of oil passes through it, and any disruption to this waterway has an immediate impact on the global economy. In practice, the strait acts as a gateway through which almost all the oil and gas leaving the Persian Gulf for the rest of the world must pass, and exports from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates depart from this point. Most of the volumes that transit Hormuz lack alternative routes to leave the region.

Oil flow through this strait averaged 20 million barrels per day in 2024, approximately 20% of global consumption of liquid petroleum products. In addition, approximately one-fifth of the world's liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade also transited through the Strait of Hormuz in 2024, primarily originating from Qatar.