NEW YORK — Wall Street steadied at Tuesday's opening bell as Brent crude pulled back below $124 a barrel on reports that OPEC+ ministers gathering in Vienna were converging around a coordinated production increase of 1.4 million barrels a day or more, giving battered global equity markets their first tentative reason to pause a war-driven selloff that has run almost without interruption since late February.

The S&P 500 was up 0.2 percent in the first 15 minutes of cash trading, recovering from a fractional decline at the open, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 84 points and the Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.1 percent as megacap technology shares lagged. The narrow gains followed a brutal Monday session in which the S&P 500 closed 1.7 percent lower, extending the index's loss since the Iran war began to roughly 5.8 percent, the steepest one-month drawdown in nearly three years.

Brent crude for May delivery fell $1.95, or 1.6 percent, to $123.85 a barrel in early New York dealing, retreating from Monday's intraday high of $126.10 after Reuters and Bloomberg reported overnight that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait had tentatively agreed to anchor a group response of between 1.4 million and 1.6 million barrels a day, with a formal communique expected from Vienna on Wednesday evening. West Texas Intermediate eased to $120.40, down $1.80 on the session.

"This is not yet a relief rally, it is a relief pause," said Frances Doyle, chief U.S. equity strategist at Hartwell Brown & Co. in New York. "The market wants to believe that Vienna will deliver real barrels, not a face-saving headline number. Until we see the communique and the language on compliance, you are going to see traders fade every bounce above 5,150 on the S&P."

The early stability in equities masked sharp dispersion beneath the surface. Energy producers gave back some of Monday's gains, with Exxon Mobil down 1.4 percent, Chevron off 1.6 percent and ConocoPhillips lower by 2.1 percent. Defense contractors were modestly weaker, with Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman each easing about half a percent after sustained rallies through March. Airlines, autos and consumer discretionary names led the bounce, with Delta Air Lines up 2.4 percent, United Airlines climbing 2.7 percent and General Motors adding 1.3 percent.

Spot gold pared a portion of Monday's record run, slipping $28 to $3,376 an ounce, while silver eased 0.6 percent to $42.55. The dollar index was little changed at 105.18, with the Japanese yen giving back some of its safe-haven gains to trade at 142.95 from a five-week peak of 142.10 on Monday. Yields on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note rose four basis points to 3.92 percent as some of the previous session's flight-to-quality bid unwound.

The choreography in Vienna has dominated the pre-market commentary loop. Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman and the U.A.E.'s Suhail al-Mazrouei led a closed-door technical session that ran past midnight Central European Time, according to two delegates familiar with the proceedings who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks were private. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak arrived in the Austrian capital on Tuesday morning and was expected to join a smaller "Vienna nine" subgroup meeting in the afternoon. Russia, which has historically resisted unilateral Saudi-led supply increases, was described by one delegate as having softened its position over the past 48 hours but still pushing for any group hike to be paired with a clear three-month review clause.

"The internal politics of OPEC+ are running on a much shorter clock than usual," said Henrik Kallio, director of oil markets research at Nordic Carbon Strategy in Oslo. "Riyadh wants a number large enough to take the speculative premium out of Brent. Moscow wants language that protects its share once the war ends. The compromise is almost certainly going to be a headline barrel count with a softer enforcement spine, and the market will trade that ambiguity for at least a week."

The International Energy Agency in Paris reiterated late Monday that member governments stood ready to coordinate a strategic petroleum reserve release if the Vienna meeting failed to produce what the agency described as "a credible supply response." A senior U.S. Treasury official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity ahead of a closed-door call with Group of Seven counterparts later Tuesday, said Washington considered an OPEC+ hike of less than 1.2 million barrels a day "insufficient given the scale of the disruption" and would activate reserve drawdowns within 72 hours of any disappointing outcome.

Premarket macro data did little to alter the day's narrative. The Conference Board's consumer confidence index, released at 10 a.m. and previewed in selected wire reports overnight, was expected to show a sharp drop to its lowest level since the autumn of 2022, with the gasoline-price subcomponent driving most of the decline. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller home price index for January, reported earlier Tuesday, showed national prices up 4.1 percent year on year, a slight deceleration from the prior month but a non-event for traders focused on energy and geopolitics.

Outside the United States, European equities edged higher in the morning session, with the pan-European STOXX 600 up 0.4 percent, Germany's DAX adding 0.6 percent and France's CAC 40 climbing 0.5 percent. Asian markets had earlier closed mostly higher, breaking a four-session losing streak; Japan's Nikkei 225 rose 0.9 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index added 1.1 percent, though Shanghai's Composite slipped 0.2 percent on weaker Chinese manufacturing data released overnight. The official Chinese purchasing managers' index fell to 49.4 in March from 50.1 in February, the first contraction reading in six months.

Insurance markets continued to flash a more cautious signal than equities. War-risk premiums for tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz held near 0.85 percent of hull value, according to a Lloyd's of London underwriter, broadly unchanged from Monday. Freight rates on the Baltic Exchange's clean tanker index rose for the eleventh consecutive session, reflecting persistent rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope and tightening tonnage in the Atlantic basin.

"The equity market gets one piece of news from Vienna and wants to rebuild a bridge across the chasm," said Maxine Olufemi, senior portfolio manager at Brookhaven Capital in Boston. "The shipping and insurance markets are still pricing the chasm. Until those two pictures converge, today's bounce is a trader's market, not an investor's market."

Strategists said Wall Street's afternoon direction would hinge less on U.S. data than on what trickled out of the OPEC+ pre-meeting consultations during the European afternoon and on whether the Islamabad peace talks, which entered their fourth day Tuesday, produced any concrete language on de-escalation. The cash session was scheduled to close at 4 p.m. Eastern, with futures markets continuing to trade overnight against the backdrop of an expected Wednesday evening Vienna communique that energy desks said would set the tone for global markets through the Easter weekend.