HONG KONG (AP) — World shares were mostly lower Thursday following modest losses on Wall Street, while oil prices declined.
In premarket trading, Nvidia’s shares jumped 7.2% after its latest quarterly earnings, released Wednesday after markets closed, beat Wall Street’s expectations thanks to strong demand for its advanced artificial intelligence chips.
In early European trading, Britain's FTSE 100 lost 0.5% to 10,823.29. France's CAC 40 fell 0.8% to 8,397.53,
while Germany's DAX edged 0.2% higher to 26,346.27.
The future for the S&P 500 gained 0.5%, while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was nearly unchanged.
During the Asian day, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 slipped 0.2% to 66,131.98. Multinational investment holding firm SoftBank Group, which invests in OpenAI and many other technology companies, gained 0.7%.
South Korea’s Kospi rose 1.5% to 6,912.37 as shares of market heavyweight Samsung Electronics gained 1.7%.
Japan’s and South Korea’s stock markets have been among the biggest beneficiaries from the global AI frenzy, alongside Taiwan’s market, where the benchmark Taiex index added 0.3%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 0.3% to 25,565.74. The Shanghai Composite index rose 1.1% to 3,956.57.
China reported that growth in industrial profits slowed in July to 11.2%, down from 15.1% in June.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was 1% lower at 9,038.20.
India’s Sensex was down 0.4%.
On Wednesday, Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 fell less than 0.1% but was still near its record high levels. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.2%, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite dipped 0.1%.
Nvidia, one of the world’s most valuable companies, reported that its revenue for the May-July quarter more than doubled from the year before.
Its earnings results are widely seen as a bellwether for the broader AI and chips industry, and big investments by tech giants in AI have sparked concerns among many investors over an AI bubble. The worry is that the companies may not generate enough profits within an expected timeframe to justify rising costs.
Outside of earnings reports, Meta Platforms added 1.1% after agreeing to pay up to $18 billion and to add child-safety measures to Facebook and Instagram to end a landmark trial over teen social media addiction and settle claims filed by states across the country.
Data released Wednesday showed the U.S. economy grew at a 1.5% pace in the April-June period, according to a revised estimate.
The inflation measure the Federal Reserve has historically preferred to use sat at 3.7% last month, the same rate as in June. That is slightly worse than the 3.6% that economists expected, according to FactSet and far above the Fed's 2% goal.
In other dealings early Thursday, Brent crude, the international standard, edged down 0.1% to $86.83 per barrel. It was trading at around $72 a barrel in late February before the war in Iran began.
Benchmark U.S. crude fell 0.2% to $82.04 per barrel.
The U.S. dollar rose to 159.41 Japanese yen from 159.31 yen. The euro was trading at $1.1646, down from $1.1651.
riteStan Choe contributed to this report.
