Asian Markets Fall, Chip Stocks Lead Declines; Oil Prices Drop

HONG KONG -- Shares slumped Thursday in Japan and South Korea in the latest spate of heavy selling of computer chip stocks, while U.S. futures edged lower after modest losses on Wall Street.

Oil prices fell after negotiators from the U.S. and Iran met separately with mediators from Qatar and Pakistan on Wednesday, as traders eyed developments in achieving a permanent end to the war in Iran.

South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index sank 7.9% to 7,648.09. with chip-related shares trading lower. Memory chipmaker SK Hynix lost 14.6% and Samsung Electronics tumbled 9.1%.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 lost 2.5% to 68,733.15. Shares of chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron shed 7.4%.

Taiwan’s Taiex declined 0.6% as chipmaking giant TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., fell 1.6%.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 0.7% to 23,034.34. Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD’s shares rose 7.9% after it reported its sales rose for a second straight month. The Shanghai Composite index fell 1.6% to 4,046.76.

Australia’s S & P/ASX 200 edged less than 0.1% higher to 8,724.50.

India's Sensex climbed 0.5%.

Surging demand for artificial intelligence has pushed many AI and tech stocks higher in recent months, with markets in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan reaping big gains. So far this year, the Kospi and Nikkei 225 have gained about 77% and 33%, respectively.

However, concerns over a potential glut in supply given the massive investments made by Big Tech companies in the U.S. and elsewhere have been clouding investor sentiment.

On Wednesday, chip stocks in the U.S. mostly fell. Micron Technology gave up 10.6%, Intel sank 9%, AMD, or Advanced Micro Devices, dropped 6.9%, Broadcom lost 2.2% and Nvidia slipped 1.3%.

The S&P 500, Wall Street’s benchmark, fell 0.2% to 7,483.23. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped less than 0.1% to 52,305.24, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite dropped 0.7% to 26,040.03.

“AI demand may continue to grow but at a slower pace than expected,” economists Megan Fisher and Vicky Redwood at Capital Economics wrote in a note on Thursday. “Firms and investors may be underestimating the barriers to AI adoption.”

While transformative technologies can be adopted widely, they may still fall short of generating financial returns soon enough in order to justify the massive scale of investments made by many firms, the economists said.

Oil prices fell early Thursday, trading at levels below where they were before the Iran war began in late February. Hopes have risen that crude supplies will improve markedly with the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that’s key for the world’s oil transport, even though the number of ships crossing the strait is still limited.

Brent crude, the international standard, fell 1.4% to $70..60 per barrel, lower than the roughly $72 a barrel before the start of the war. Benchmark U.S. crude fell 1.5% to $67.52 per barrel.

In other dealings, the U.S. dollar was trading at 161.81 Japanese yen, down from 162.58 yen, after the yen fell to a four-decade low against the dollar on Wednesday. The euro was trading at $1.1392, up from $1.1377.