Asian shares have retreated, with South Korea’s Kospi shedding nearly 8% despite a rebound for AI stocks that lifted stocks on Wall Street. Oil prices rose and U.S. futures were mixed.
Market Performance
In Seoul, the Kospi lost 7.6% to 7,444.13 as shares in both Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix slumped 8.7%. The sharp drops occurred even after Samsung announced its operating income surged 19-fold to 89.4 trillion won ($58.7 billion) in the last quarter while its revenue more than doubled.
AI stocks have been gyrating on fears their prices have shot too high, raising questions about whether all the dollars flowing into AI chips and data centers can possibly create enough gains in productivity and profits to make back all the investments.
Expert Insights
“The first proper AI stress test may not have arrived with weak demand, a capex warning, or some sudden crack in the data center story. It may have arrived with Samsung posting an extraordinary quarter and the stock falling anyway,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.
SK Hynix will further test investors’ appetite for AI this week, aiming to raise $28 billion by selling shares of stock that will trade in the United States on the Nasdaq. That would make it one of the biggest U.S. offerings ever, behind SpaceX’s IPO from last month, which raised $75 billion.
The company’s stock in Seoul has already more than tripled so far this year because of the AI boom, despite sharp losses in recent weeks.
Global Market Trends
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 declined 1.8% to 68,493.52. Computer chipmaker Tokyo Electron lost 3.4% and chipmaker Kioxia Holdings shed 10.7%.
The Hang Seng in Hong Kong declined 0.4% to 23,517.70, while the Shanghai Composite index gave up 1% to 3,999.03. Taiwan’s Taiex lost 1.8%.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 declined 0.3% and India’s Sensex edged 0.1% higher.
On Monday, the S&P 500 rose 0.7% to 7,537.54, pulling to within 1% of its all-time high, even though the majority of stocks within the index fell.
The strength for companies in the artificial-intelligence technology industry sent the Nasdaq composite 1.1% higher, to 26,121.16. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.3%, to 53,055.91, a record.
Broadcom was one of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500. It rose 3.7% after announcing long-term agreements to provide silicon products to Apple.
SpaceX erased an early gain to fall 1% in the last day of trading before it’s scheduled to join the Nasdaq 100 index of the largest non-financial stocks on the Nasdaq.
In the oil market, the price of a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, rose 52 cents to $72.51 a barrel.
The stability of supplies remains uncertain. A tanker traveling off the coast of Oman in the Strait of Hormuz caught on fire early Tuesday morning after being struck by a projectile, the British military said.
Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.
