Markets on Wall Street tipped toward losses before the opening bell Tuesday even as a handful of technology companies saw their shares post big gains as demand for AI and data center infrastructure remains red hot.
Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.4%, while S&P 500 futures dipped 0.2%. Nasdaq futures inched 0.1% lower.
Marvell Technologies, which designs chips for data centers, soared nearly 20% after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang predicted
it would be the next $1 trillion company.
Generac jumped 9.5% after the power supply company said it signed a deal to provide backup power generators for an undisclosed company's data center infrastructure.
HPE saw its shares gain more than 30% after it reported record second-quarter revenue, stoked by demand for its high-powered servers.
In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude lost $1.26 to $90.90 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, slipped the same $1.26 to $93.72 a barrel. The levels are still well above the roughly $70 level they were at before the war.
Much hinges on whether the United States and Iran will reach an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, allowing deliveries of oil to resume from the Persian Gulf and easing the upward pressure on inflation.
Japan imports almost all its oil, although the effects on prices of gas and other products have been relatively contained by the release of the nation’s reserves so far.
“Crude shortages have already forced refiners across Asia and Europe to aggressively reduce runs,” said analyst Stephen Innes. “The result is that the squeeze is no longer confined to crude inventories. It is spreading into the fuels that actually power economies: gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, LPG, and naphtha.”
At midday in Europe, France's CAC 40 jumped 0.7% while the German DAX gained 0.8% and Britain's FTSE 100 added 0.2%.
In Asia, Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 slipped 0.3% to finish at 66,734.24. South Korea's Kospi inched up 0.2% to 8,801.49.
The Hang Seng gained 2.5% to 26,038.32, while the Shanghai Composite rose 0.4% to 4,075.10.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 shed less than 0.1% to 8,724.40.
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Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@yurikageyama
