08:49 AM EDT, 04/20/2026 (MT Newswires) -- US equity futures were lower pre-bell Monday as tensions once again escalated in the Middle East after the US seized an Iranian cargo ship that tried to run its blockade of Iran's ports and Iran refused to restart peace negotiations with the US in Pakistan.

Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were 0.5% lower, S&P 500 futures were down 0.4%, and Nasdaq futures were 0.4% lower.

The US had said it wanted to resume negotiations before the two-week ceasefire with Iran ends on Tuesday, but Iran's foreign ministry said it would not join new talks due the ongoing blockade and "excessive demands"of the US.

Over the weekend, Iran lifted and then reimposed its own blockade on vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

Some of the companies expected to report quarterly earnings this week are GE Aerospace (GE) and UnitedHealth Group (UNH) pre-bell on Tuesday, Tesla (TSLA) and IBM (IBM) after-market on Wednesday, Intel (INTC) after-market on Thursday, and Procter &Gamble (PG) pre-bell on Friday.

Oil prices were higher, with front-month global benchmark North Sea Brent crude up 4.9% at $94.81 per barrel and US West Texas Intermediate crude 5.6% higher at $87.25 per barrel.

The economic calendar is vacant.

In other world markets, Japan's Nikkei closed 0.6% higher, Hong Kong's Hang Seng ended 0.8% higher, and China's Shanghai Composite finished 0.8% higher. Meanwhile, the UK's FTSE 100 was down 0.6% and Germany's DAX index was 1.3% lower in Europe's early afternoon session.

In equities, shares of major oil companies Exxon Mobil (XOM), Chevron (CVX), and ConocoPhillips (COP) were up 1%, 1.2%, and 1.7%, respectively, as oil prices increased on Monday. Marvell Technology (MRVL) stock was up 5.8% after The Information report the company was in talks with Alphabet's (GOOG, GOOGL) Google to develop two new processors optimized for artificial intelligence inference tasks.

On the losing side, BHP Group (BHP) stock was down 1.2% after a Bloomberg News report the company and Mitsubishi Development started a review of their coal and other mining assets in Queensland over concerns about the royalty demands of the Australian state.