Dow tumbles 370 points after U.S. strikes Iran, but index posts fifth straight winning month

BREAKING: Dow tumbles 370 points after the US strikes Iran, though the index still closed out August with a fifth straight winning month.

The Dow dropped 374 points after the US and Iran traded fire again. And yet the same index just closed out a fifth straight winning month.

You can see the mood on the floor here, and it wasn't panic, more of a wince. The S&P slipped a third of a percent, the Nasdaq barely moved, and on the Dow it was Goldman Sachs and Alphabet doing most of the damage. Oil jumped again on the strikes, crude settled near eighty six, Brent back above ninety, and long Treasury yields climbed right alongside. That's the combination stocks like least.

Step back though, and August was a genuinely good month. The Dow finished up more than one percent, its fifteenth positive month in the last sixteen. The S&P gained 2.6 percent, the Nasdaq 3.9, and tech carried it, Nvidia up around ten percent and Micron up sixteen.

One strategist put the whole thing plainly tonight. Oil between eighty and ninety, the economy lives with it. Above a hundred, it gets prohibitive. That's the number this entire rally now sits on.

This is Sara White, reporting for HIT.