Asian shares mostly retreated on Wednesday following a sell-off of technology stocks on Wall Street, and oil prices gained after the US launched fresh airstrikes against Iran.
The US military launched attacks early Wednesday following the crash of an Army helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz that US President Donald Trump blamed on Iran. Iran pledged to respond and said it “will leave no attack or threat unanswered.”
The latest flare-up of fighting cast doubt on progress toward a permanent end to the war, which has lasted more than three months and further roiled markets already wavering from spates of heavy selling of stocks in companies linked to the boom in artificial intelligence.
With prospects for fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz in doubt, oil prices resumed their upward climb.
Brent crude, the international standard, rose 0.9 per cent to $92.30 per barrel, after falling on Wednesday. It was trading at approximately $70 a barrel before the war in late February.
Benchmark US crude was up 1 per cent to $89.04 per barrel.
“The situation remains highly volatile,” ING commodities strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote in a Wednesday note. “This once again demonstrates the difficulty Iran and the US face in working toward a sustainable ceasefire that allows for the free flow of vessels through the Strait of Hormuz.”
They noted that demand tends to be strong at this time of year, adding to upward pressure on prices.
US futures edged lower following losses for chipmakers, including Micron Technology, Advanced Micro Devices, or AMD, and Marvell Technology during US trading.
South Korea’s Kospi gave up 4.7 per cent, to 7,720.59, after surging the day before. Samsung Electronics, which makes memory and logic chips and is the country’s most valuable company, sank 5.8 per cent. Shares of chipmaker SK Hynix plummeted 6.3 per cent.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 dropped 1.4 per cent to 64,524.84 after data showed Japan’s producer price index, a measure for prices at the wholesale level, rose 6.3 per cent in May from a year before. That’s the fastest pace in more than three years.
Shares of multinational investment holding firm SoftBank Group, which has a strong AI focus, lost 8.9 per cent. But chipmaker Tokyo Electron advanced 5.3 per cent.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1.1 per cent to 24,296.62, while the Shanghai Composite index slipped 0.7 per cent to 3,980.24. Official data on Wednesday showed that China’s producer prices rose to nearly a four-year high of 3.9 per cent in May compared with a year earlier.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged up 0.2 per cent to 8,624.50.
Taiwan’s Taiex was trading 1.6 per cent lower, while the Sensex climbed 0.6 per cent.
On Tuesday, Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 fell 0.3 per cent to 7,386.65. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.2 per cent to 50,872.11, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite dropped 1 per cent to 25,678.82.
US chipmaker Micron Technology went from an early 4 per cent gain to a 10 per cent drop before closing 1.4 per cent lower. Shares of Marvell Technology sank 7.6 per cent, and AMD sank 3 per cent.
Investors are also monitoring updates on US inflation that are set for this week, as the Iran war is driving up global energy prices.
In other dealings, the US dollar was steady at 160.36 Japanese yen. The euro was trading at USD 1.1550, up from USD 1.1543. (AP) SKS SKS