HONG KONG (AP) — Oil prices bounced between gains and losses on Thursday and world shares were mixed, with South Korea’s Kospi falling again after losing more than 16% over the past two days due to selling of stocks related to artificial intelligence-related.
Crude prices remained 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.
Brent crude, the international
standard, slipped 0.2% to $87.92 per barrel after rising earlier. It was trading around $72 a barrel in late February, before the Iran war began.
Benchmark U.S. crude lost 0.3% to $84.25 per barrel.
The future for the S&P 500 was up 0.4% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.2%.
In early European trading, Britain's FTSE 100 rose 0.2% to 10,930.40. France's CAC 40 surged 0.8% to 8,477.55. Germany's DAX was nearly unchanged at 25,457.08.
In South Korea, recent declines in its benchmark Kospi, a big beneficiary of the global boom in AI, have been viewed by some analysts as a reflection of broader doubts about massive investments in building AI capacity.
The Kospi fell 1.2% to 5,593.56, after falling 10.8% on Tuesday and nearly 6% on Wednesday. The benchmark has fallen more than 38% from its all-time closing high of more than 9,100 in June, though it's still up nearly 30% so far this year.
Samsung Electronics fell 0.7%, even after the South Korean technology giant reported a record operating profit for the latest quarter, largely in line with estimates.
Chipmaker SK Hynix lost 5.6% 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 0.7% to 61,867.43, recovering some of its losses after falling 1.5% a day earlier. Open-AI investor SoftBank Group fell 2.5%. But computer chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron climbed 4.5%. Memory chipmaker Kioxia Holdings added 2.9%.
Taiwan’s Taiex, which was also lifted by the AI boom, closed 0.3% lower. Its leading chipmaker TSMC edged up 0.2%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng edged up 0.2% to 25,858.88. The Shanghai Composite index lost 0.6% to 3,804.69.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.8% to 8,967.70.
India’s Sensex was mostly unchanged.
On Wednesday, the benchmark S&P 500 dropped 1.5% and the Dow industrials fell 2.2%. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index lost 1.7%.
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 4.68%, up from 4.61% late Tuesday.
In other dealings early Thursday, the U.S. dollar rose to 163.83 Japanese yen from 163.41 yen. The euro rose to $1.1475 from $1.1467.
