Surging oil prices add another worry for frazzled investors

A US stock market, already on edge from a hawkish Federal Reserve and a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, now has another worry: higher oil prices.

US crude prices stand at around $91 a barrel after surging some 40 per cent since December 1 and earlier this week touched their highest level since 2014. Prices for Brent crude, the global benchmark, have also soared and are near 7-year highs.

Rapidly rising oil prices can be a troubling development for markets, as they cloud the economic outlook by increasing costs for businesses and consumers. Higher crude also threatens to accelerate already-surging inflation, compounding worries that the Fed will need to aggressively tighten monetary policy to tamp down consumer prices. "The stock market would really run into trouble if we went north of $125 per barrel and stayed there for a while because that would overheat high levels of inflation," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities.