Oil surged past $114 a barrel for the first time since May on Friday, hitting equity markets already reeling from a brutal overnight sell-off in Big Tech stocks on Wall Street. Brent crude, the international benchmark, was up 1.4 per cent at $114.45 a barrel in London, extending a blistering rally amid fears of renewed escalation of the conflict in the Middle East. The surging oil price threatens to inflict further damage on the global economy just as concerns over the sustainability of the AI boom and a French bond sell-off intensify.
The Nasdaq 100 closed down 2.9 per cent on Thursday after Meta’s blowout forecast for capex deepened anxiety over whether the historic — and increasingly debt-fuelled — AI investment boom would pay off. A day of volatile trading across Asia saw South Korea’s tech-heavy Kospi index tumble as much as 4 per cent before recovering to trade flat. Japan’s tech-heavy Nikkei 225 Average fell as much as 2 per cent before paring some of its losses.
Haven government bonds rallied sharply in Asia, with the yield on the 10-year Japanese government bond falling 0.09 percentage points to 2.77 per cent. Global investors are testing the risk that hyperscalers and the AI story is going to cave in and are looking for places to safely park cash. After Thursday’s steep declines, the Nasdaq 100 was set to open 0.2 per cent higher on Friday.
The S&P 500, which closed 1.2 per cent lower, was poised to open flat. Despite recovering late in the Asian trading day, the Kospi has declined by almost a fifth this month and is more than 40 per cent off its record high in June, making it the world’s worst-performing stock market. Thursday’s decline was led by memory-chip makers, as Meta’s spending plans revived doubts over the long-term viability of debt-financed AI infrastructure expansion.
Samsung Electronics dropped 4.1 per cent, while SK Hynix declined 2.6 per cent. The two chipmakers account for about half of the South Korean index. SK Hynix said on Friday it would scrap the US listing of Solidigm, its California-based maker of Nand flash memory chips used to store data in electronic devices, blaming recent capital market conditions and share price trends.
In Japan shares in Open AI investor Soft Bank fell 6 per cent to bring this week’s decline to almost 15 per cent. Sumco, which produces wafers used in high-end semiconductors, led the Nikkei sell-off with a 7.8 per cent drop.
Source: Financial Times Markets · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing