Markets in Asia were mostly lower on Wednesday, with sharp declines in Japan and South Korea following a sell-off of technology stocks on Wall Street. The latest flaring of fighting between the U.S. and Iran has dimmed hopes for progress toward a permanent end to the war, which has lasted more than three months and roiled markets already wavering from spates of heavy selling of stocks in companies linked to the boom in artificial intelligence.
Oil Prices Stabilize
Oil prices fell back after surging as the U.S. military launched attacks against Iran following the crash of an Army helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz that President Donald Trump blamed on Tehran. Brent crude, the international standard, lost 0.1% to $91.32 per barrel. It was trading at approximately $70 a barrel before the war began in late February.
Benchmark U.S. crude was 0.2% lower at $88.02 per barrel. The situation remains highly volatile, according to ING commodities strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey. Demand tends to be strong in the early summer, adding to upward pressure on prices.
Market Impact
U.S. futures edged lower, following losses for chipmakers including Micron Technology, Advanced Micro Devices, or AMD, and Marvell Technology during U.S. trading. South Korea’s Kospi gave up 4.5%, to 7,730.82, after surging the day before. Samsung Electronics, which makes memory and logic chips and is the country’s most valuable company, sank 6.5%. Shares of chipmaker SK Hynix plummeted 8.2%.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 dropped 1.9% to 64,174.34, after data showed Japan’s producer price index, a measure for prices at the wholesale level, rose 6.3% in May from a year before. That’s the fastest pace in more than three years. Shares of technology and telecommunications giant SoftBank Group, which has a strong AI focus, lost 8.6%. Chip equipment maker Advantest lost 3.6%, but Tokyo Electron advanced 3.9%.
Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.
