Shares rallied in Asia on Friday after the Dow Jones Industrial Average set another record, as some key AI-related stocks rose while others extended losses.
U.S. futures were moderately higher and oil prices also rose. South Korea’s Kospi, which sank nearly 8% on Thursday, recovered some of those losses, gaining 2.8% to 7,863.22. Samsung Electronics, the country’s biggest company and a major maker of computer chips, gained 7%. Smaller rival SK Hynix was up 4.9%.
Market Trends
In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 advanced 0.9% to 69,368.30. Chipmaker Tokyo Electron slipped 2.5%, while memory maker Kioxia jumped 6.6%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng climbed 1.7% to 23,444.45 and the Shanghai Composite index added 0.7% to 4,056.81.
Taiwan’s Taiex fell 0.6%. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 picked up 1.3% to 8,834.90. U.S. markets will be closed Friday for the Independence Day holiday.
On Thursday, most U.S. stocks rose as the Dow snagged another record, gaining 1.1% to 52,900.07. But more drops for computer chip companies and other winners of the artificial-intelligence boom kept indexes mixed.
The S&P 500 finished the day virtually unchanged and edged up by less than 0.1%, even though seven out of every 10 stocks within the index rose. It closed at 7,483.24. The Nasdaq composite dropped 0.8% to 25,382.67.
Stocks broadly got some help from a report showing U.S. employers added 57,000 jobs to their payrolls last month. That’s good for the economy, but it was also short of the 100,000 jobs that economists expected and a slowdown from May’s hiring pace.
The bright side of the weaker-than-expected result is that it could keep pressure off inflation, which has been accelerating worldwide because of jumps in oil prices caused by the war with Iran. And now that oil prices are back below where they were before the war, if inflation slows in upcoming months, the Federal Reserve may feel less need to raise interest rates several times this year.
That would be a relief for investors, who tend to love lower interest rates because they can give the economy a boost by making it less expensive for U.S. households and businesses to borrow money and spend. Lower rates also tend to push upward on prices for stocks and other investments.
Stocks of companies in the crypto industry were also strong after the price of bitcoin rose roughly 2%, a day after dropping near its lowest level since 2024. Robinhood Markets rose 3.8%, and Coinbase Global gained 3.9%.
But more drops for computer chip companies weighed on indexes. They’ve come under pressure because of worries that their stock prices shot too high in the frenzy around AI and that all the spending on chips and data centers may not yield as much profit and productivity growth as hoped.
Memory maker Micron Technology erased an early gain to drop 5.5%, a day after plunging 10.6%. Nvidia fell 1.4%, and Lam Research sank 10.2%. They were some of the heaviest weights on the S&P 500 because they’ve grown so huge in size amid AI mania.
Nvidia has a total value of nearly $4.7 trillion, for example, which means that its stock’s movements have more weight on the S&P 500 than any other.
In other trading early Friday, Brent crude, the international standard, gained 0.6% to $72.26 a barrel. U.S. benchmark crude was up 0.5% to $69.05 a barrel. The dollar fell to 161.17 Japanese yen from 161.97 yen. The euro rose to $1.1439 from $1.1431.
Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.
