After the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, the price of oil immediately jumped, interest rates rose and stocks slumped. Within a week, American drivers were paying 34 percent more for gasoline, as the flow of energy from the Persian Gulf froze.

Six months later, the war has locked into a fragile holding pattern. Oil is getting out, but less of it, and gas prices remain high. Ships are moving but fewer than before the war, and through different routes. Investors in stocks and bonds have turned their attention — mostly — to other issues.

Here’s where markets stand after six months of war.

The price of oil is up more than 20 percent.

At $89 a barrel, oil costs 23 percent more than it did before the war, driving up prices for everything from gasoline to plastics.

But had you asked most energy executives six months ago to predict oil prices after such a long conflict over the Strait of Hormuz, they would have picked a much higher number. The global economy has been surprisingly adept at getting by without all of the energy it used to buy from the Persian Gulf, one of the most important oil-producing regions in the world.

There are a few reasons for that. Countries that are highly dependent on oil from the Middle East cut back. The Trump administration and other governments withdrew oil from strategic reserves. Companies across the Americas pumped more oil than expected, and many of those in the Gulf found ways to export oil despite the dangers of traveling through the strait. And in a move that few anticipated, China — typically the world’s biggest oil importer — slashed purchases.

Looking ahead: Where prices go from here will depend on, among other things, how long the United States and Iran continue to interfere with traffic in the strait and whether China starts importing more oil. For now, though, the market appears to be settling into a new normal. The bigger concern is that wars — in the Middle East and between Russia and Ukraine — have knocked out refineries, leaving the world with less capacity to turn oil into gasoline and diesel and making those fuels much more expensive.

Prices at the pump are higher.

Rising oil prices translate to higher gas prices, and the jump in the cost of gasoline is perhaps the most visible effect of the war for American consumers. The U.S. national average price of unleaded gasoline, at $4.09 per gallon on Friday, has risen 38 percent since the start of the war, according to the AAA motor club.

Prices are rising largely because of costlier crude oil, which accounts for roughly half of retail prices at the pump, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Taxes, transport costs and the profits earned by gas stations constitute much of the rest, but the effects are not spread evenly: Gas is $5.65 per gallon on average in California versus $3.63 in Texas.

The price of diesel has risen even faster than gasoline, approaching the record high it set in 2022. At $5.61 a gallon, prices are up nearly 50 percent from prewar levels.

Diesel powers large parts of the United States, used by trains, trucks and other heavy machinery. As prices climb, businesses often pass on the costs to customers, with broad implications for inflation.

Prices are rising because there are fewer refineries making diesel. The volume of diesel produced in the Middle East has dropped amid the fighting, with the effects compounded by the buckling of Russia’s refining capacity after Ukrainian attacks on its facilities.

Looking ahead: Energy analysts often describe the swing in fuel prices as “up like a rocket, down like a feather” — a phenomenon that means gas costs quickly track increases in the price of oil but are slow to follow when it falls. When crude dropped to its prewar price for a brief spell in late June and early July, the average cost of gas remained 30 percent higher than before the war. That pattern is expected to continue.

Shipping in the Middle East is scrambled.

Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway that carried one-fifth of the world’s oil before the war, is still mostly paralyzed.

Before the war, more than 100 ships per day transited the strait between Iran and Oman. Now, the traffic is at a trickle. Only around a dozen ships per day have recently passed through the strait, according to Kpler, a maritime data company.

The Trump administration has urged ships to make the passage, with the U.S. Navy guiding them through the southern part of the strait in Omani waters. As of this week, U.S. forces had cleared the mines that Iran planted in the strait, according to Capt. Tim Hawkins, a U.S. Central Command spokesman.

But passing through the strait remains perilous. Two seafarers have been killed in the last two weeks, and another is missing. In total, there have been at least 71 attacks on ships since the start of the war, and 19 sailors have been killed.

In June, Iran and the United States signed a deal to reopen the strait, and for three days more than 60 ships passed through daily. But the agreement fell apart, and U.S. forces reimposed a blockade on Iranian ports. Iran has sought to assert its control by creating a new system in which it charges ships for passage through the strait, which was previously free.

The turmoil has forced many shipping companies to bypass the strait. Saudi Arabia, the region’s biggest oil producer, has shifted to export more crude via the Red Sea.

But then the Iranian-backed Houthi militia, which controls part of Yemen, threatened to blockade Saudi ships in the Red Sea. A new workaround, through the northern part of the Red Sea, is more complicated and costly. Energy exports from the Persian Gulf remain below what they were before the war.

Looking ahead: It’s unclear when — or even if, some experts believe — shipping in the region will return to what it was before the war. This week, Iran and Oman, an American ally, said they were discussing a plan to manage traffic in the strait. There were few details about how such an agreement would work.

Stocks are up. Bonds are looking shakier.

Investors have learned over the years not to pay much heed to geopolitics. Short, sharp slumps in the stock market followed shutdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s attack on Israel, before the market swiftly rebounded and ascended to new heights.

The S&P 500 dropped in the first month of the war, then recovered to hit a series of fresh record highs, the last one in the middle of August. The index is now 13 percent higher since the start of the war.

With oil prices in the futures market settling under $90 a barrel through the end of the year, stock market investors have largely turned their attention elsewhere. In particular, their focus has centered on the enormous profits generated by companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence, with quarterly earnings continually surpassing expectations.

This week, Nvidia, the tech giant, more than doubled its quarterly revenue, to almost $100 billion, and showed few signs of slowing down.

As expectations increase about how much cash Nvidia and others riding the A.I. boom might generate in the future, so have their stock prices, which have a major influence on indexes because of their multitrillion-dollar market values. So far, blockbuster corporate earnings have largely shielded stock investors from other worries, not just the war in Iran.

Bond investors appear more anxious, with rising yields — which move in the opposite direction to prices — reflecting higher expected economic growth because of A.I. but also intensifying worries about inflation, government debt and geopolitical uncertainty. The 10-year Treasury yield, which influences mortgages and business loans, has risen to just under 4.7 percent from around 4 percent six months ago.

Looking ahead: Over time, higher bond yields result in higher interest rates throughout the economy, including for the A.I. companies borrowing billions of dollars to build data centers. Higher interest costs tend to eat into corporate profits, a worry for stock investors. “The bottom line for investors is that interest rates are going to stay higher for longer,” said Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management.

Eric Schmitt and Emmett Lindner contributed reporting.