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World Shares Mixed Thursday 07/02 04:50
World shares were mixed Thursday as benchmarks in Japan and South Korea
slumped in the latest bout of heavy selling of computer chip stocks.
HONG KONG (AP) -- World shares were mixed Thursday as benchmarks in Japan
and South Korea slumped in the latest bout of heavy selling of computer chip
stocks.
Oil prices fell after negotiators from the U.S. and Iran met separately with
mediators from Qatar and Pakistan on Wednesday, as traders eyed developments in
talks on achieving a permanent end to the war in Iran.
In early European trading, Britain's FTSE 100 rose 0.5% to 10,530.26.
France's CAC 40 advanced 0.7% to 8,393.60, while Germany's DAX climbed 0.5% to
25,160.50.
In Asia, South Korea's benchmark Kospi index sank 7.9% to 7,648.09. with
chip-related shares trading lower. Memory chipmaker SK Hynix lost 14.6% and
Samsung Electronics tumbled 9.1%.
Tokyo's Nikkei 225 lost 2.5% to 68,733.15. Shares of chip equipment maker
Tokyo Electron shed 7.4%.
Taiwan's Taiex declined 0.6% as chipmaking giant TSMC, or Taiwan
Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., fell 1.6%.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng closed 0.8% higher at 23,055.03. Chinese electric
vehicle maker BYD's shares rose 8.1% after it reported its sales rose for a
second straight month. The Shanghai Composite index fell 2% to 4,028.90.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 edged less than 0.1% higher to 8,724.50.
India's Sensex climbed 0.6%.
Surging demand for artificial intelligence has pushed many AI and tech
stocks higher in recent months, with markets in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan
reaping big gains. So far this year, the Kospi and Nikkei 225 have gained about
77% and 33%, respectively.
However, concerns over a potential glut in supply given the massive
investments made by Big Tech companies in the U.S. and elsewhere have been
clouding investor sentiment.
On Wednesday, chip stocks in the U.S. mostly fell. Micron Technology gave up
10.6%, Intel sank 9%, AMD, or Advanced Micro Devices, dropped 6.9%, Broadcom
lost 2.2% and Nvidia slipped 1.3%.
The S&P 500, Wall Street's benchmark, fell 0.2% to 7,483.23. The Dow Jones
Industrial Average slipped less than 0.1% to 52,305.24, and the
technology-heavy Nasdaq composite dropped 0.7% to 26,040.03.
"AI demand may continue to grow but at a slower pace than expected,"
economists Megan Fisher and Vicky Redwood at Capital Economics wrote in a note
on Thursday. "Firms and investors may be underestimating the barriers to AI
adoption."
While transformative technologies can be adopted widely, they may still fall
short of generating financial returns soon enough in order to justify the
massive scale of investments made by many firms, the economists said.
Oil prices fell early Thursday, trading at levels below where they were
before the Iran war began in late February. Hopes have risen that crude
supplies will improve markedly with the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the
narrow waterway that's key for the world's oil transport, even though the
number of ships crossing the strait is still limited.
Brent crude, the international standard, fell 0.9% to $70.93 per barrel,
lower than the roughly $72 a barrel before the start of the war. Benchmark U.S.
crude fell 0.8% to $68.03 per barrel.
In other dealings, the U.S. dollar was trading at 161.10 Japanese yen, down
from 162.58 yen, after the yen fell to a four-decade low against the dollar on
Wednesday. The euro was trading at $1.1417, up from $1.1377.
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