Oil prices fell Wednesday and Asian shares were mostly trading lower as South Korea’s Kospi extended its losses after falling more than 16% over the past two days.
Crude prices remain volatile after the U.S. said early Thursday it had conducted a “heavy wave” of strikes against Iran, responding to an attack on a U.S. base.
U.S. futures edged higher after losses on Wall Street.
In South Korea, recent drops in its benchmark Kospi, a big beneficiary of the global boom in artificial intelligence, have been seen by some analysts as a reflection of broader doubts about massive investments by technology giants in expanding capacity for AI.
The Kospi was swinging on Thursday and was down 1.3% to 5,587.82, after falling 10.8% on Tuesday and nearly 6% on Wednesday. The benchmark has fallen more than 35% from its all-time high of more than 9,000 in June, though it's still up roughly 30% so far this year.
Samsung Electronics gained 2.4%, after the South Korean technology giant reported a record operating profit for the latest quarter, largely in line with estimates.
Chipmaker SK Hynix lost 4% after sinking more than 9% on Wednesday, when it also reported a record quarterly operating profit, which ballooned nearly sixfold. That was still lower than what analysts had expected and disappointed investors dumped its shares.
In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 gained 0.6% to 61,778.02. Open-AI investor SoftBank Group fell 2.7%. But computer chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron climbed 4.4%. Memory chipmaker Kioxia Holdings added 7.5%.
Taiwan’s Taiex, which was also lifted by the AI boom, advanced 0.8%. Its leading chipmaker TSMC was trading 1.8% higher.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell less than 0.1% to 25,779.70. The Shanghai Composite index lost 1.2% to 3,784.55.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.9% to 8,959.90.
India’s Sensex was less than 0.1% higher.
Oil prices fell on Thursday even as the U.S. and Iran resumed exchanging attacks. U.S. President Donald Trump said the U.S. would hit Iran “very hard,” after it targeted a U.S. base in Jordan. Maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for oil transport, remains limited, putting pressure on global supplies.
Brent crude, the international standard, lost 1% to $87.18 per barrel after rising sharply a day earlier. It was trading around $72 a barrel in late February, before the war began.
Benchmark U.S. crude declined 0.9% to $83.74 per barrel.
In the U.S. on Wednesday, the benchmark S&P 500 dropped 1.5% to 7,316.15. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2.2% to 51.594.14, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite lost 1.7% to 24,442.94.
Several chipmaking big names fell. Nvidia lost 3.6% and AMD, or Advanced Micro Devices, shed 5.5%. Broadcom declined 2.8%.
The U.S. stocks traded lower also after the Federal Reserve decided to hold interest rates steady even as some members on the policymaking committee wanted to raise rates.
The Fed’s chairman, Kevin Warsh, reiterated his commitment to get inflation back to 2% following years of faster-than-hoped increases in prices, but he also stuck to his plan of giving financial markets fewer clues about what the Fed may do with interest rates in the near future.
With less guidance from the Fed, financial markets may be set for more volatile trading amid the uncertainty.
“Did the Fed take an explicit change in its policy rate today?” Warsh asked rhetorically in a news conference following the Fed’s decision. “No, but I think that’s the beginning of the story.”
In the bond market, the yield of the U.S. 10-year Treasury was at 4.70%, up from 4.61% late Tuesday.
In other dealings early Thursday, the U.S. dollar rose to 163.49 Japanese yen from 163.41 yen. The euro was trading at $1.1454, down from $1.1467.
AP Business Writers Stan Choe and Matt Ott contributed to this report.
This article was written by CHAN HO-HIM from The Independent and was legally licensed through the DiveMarketplace by Industry Dive. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.