Technology stocks led equity markets lower as concerns over whether the vast amount of investment in will pay off resurfaced. Brent rose above $110 a barrel as the Strait of Hormuz stayed shut.
Nasdaq 100 futures slipped 0.6 per cent, with tech on the back foot after the Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI recently failed to meet its goals for new users and sales.
SoftBank Group Corp., a major backer of the ChatGPT chatbot owner, slumped 9.9 per cent in Tokyo. Shares of major OpenAI partners including Oracle Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and CoreWeave Inc. fell in US premarket trading.
Brent advanced for a seventh straight day. The White House said President Donald Trump will address a proposal from Iran to reopen Hormuz “very soon.”
The dollar rose alongside global bond yields. The yen, meanwhile, reversed gains after Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda refrained from giving a decisive signal on when interest rates may rise. S&P 500 contracts fell 0.2 per cent.
Tech stocks are taking a breather after an 18-day advance in chipmakers fueled a nearly 10 per cent gain in the S&P 500 in April. Resurgent optimism about AI stood behind the charge as the rest of the market lagged due to rising oil prices. Wednesday’s earnings from four hyper-scalers will offer the rally another test.
“The single most important line item isn’t revenue or margins; it’s capex,” said Amanda Lyons, IT-sector lead and head of research at Energy Group Capital. “Any hint of slowing spend would be taken negatively for the ecosystem, but a sharp step-up would likely raise questions around returns.”
Europe led global bond losses on worries that rising oil prices will push inflation higher and prompt central banks to tighten monetary policy. Euro-area consumers saw prices soaring 4 per cent over the next 12 months, up from 2.5 per cent in February, according to a European Central Bank survey.
Ahead of this week’s policy meetings by the Federal Reserve, ECB and Bank of England, traders are expecting officials to keep rates on hold.
The outlook gets cloudier for subsequent meetings, with everything hinging on the duration of the Middle East war. Money markets see the ECB and BOE hiking as soon as June, while odds are for the Fed to keep rates on hold for the rest of the year.
“The rising oil price is starting to feature in macro data, with, for example, higher inflation numbers, and forward-looking indicators such as consumer confidence already trending down,” said Anna Macdonald at Hargreaves Lansdown. “The longer the crisis rolls on, the more severe the impacts will be, and the more we expect it will dominate investor attention.”
Some of the main moves in markets:
Stocks
- The Stoxx Europe 600 was little changed as of 10:48 a.m. London time
- S&P 500 futures fell 0.2 per cent
- Nasdaq 100 futures fell 0.6 per cent
- Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.3 per cent
- The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 0.4 per cent
- The MSCI Emerging Markets Index fell 0.7 per cent
Cryptocurrencies
- Bitcoin fell 0.5 per cent to $76,559.1
- Ether fell 0.5 per cent to $2,280.17
Bonds
- The yield on 10-year Treasuries advanced two basis points to 4.35 per cent
- Germany’s 10-year yield advanced three basis points to 3.06 per cent
- Britain’s 10-year yield advanced two basis points to 4.99 per cent
Commodities
- Brent crude rose 3 per cent to $111.53 a barrel
- Spot gold fell 1.5 per cent to $4,611.21 an ounce
(This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.)
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