Hong Kong

Oilprices bounced between gains and losses on Thursday and world shares were mixed, with South Korea’s Kospi falling again after losing more than 16 per cent over the past two days due to selling of stocks related to artificial intelligence-related. Crude prices remained volatile after the US said early Thursday it had conducted a “heavy wave” of strikes against Iran, responding to an attack on a US base.

Brent crude, the international standard, slipped 0.2 per cent to $87.92 per barrel after rising ear-lier. It was trading around $72 a barrel in late February, before the Iran war began. Benchmark US crude lost 0.3 per cent to $84.25 per barrel. The future for the S&P 500 was up 0.4 per cent while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.2 per cent.

In early European trading, Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.2 per cent to 10,930.40. France’s CAC 40 surged 0.8 per cent to 8,477.55. Germany’s DAX was nearly unchanged at 25,457.08. In South Korea, recent declines in its benchmark Kospi, a big beneficiary of the global boom in AI, have been viewed by some analysts as a reflection of broader doubts about massive investments in building AI capacity. The Kospi fell 1.2 per cent to 5,593.56, after falling 10.8 per cent on Tuesday and nearly 6 per cent on Wednesday. The benchmark has fallen more than 38 per cent from its all-time closing high of more than 9,100 in June, though it’s still up nearly 30 per cent so far this year.

Samsung Electronics fell 0.7 per cent, even after the South Korean technology giant reported a record operating profit for the latest quarter, largely in line with estimates. Chipmaker SK Hynix lost 5.6 per cent after sinking more than 9 per cent on Wednesday, when it also reported a rec-ord quarterly operating profit, which ballooned nearly sixfold. That was still lower than what analysts had expected and disappointed investors dumped its shares.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 gained 0.7 per cent to 61,867.43, recovering some of its losses after falling 1.5 per cent a day earlier. Open-AI investor SoftBank Group fell 2.5 per cent. But com-puter chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron climbed 4.5 per cent. Memory chipmaker Kioxia Holdings added 2.9 per cent.

Taiwan’s Taiex, which was also lifted by the AI boom, closed 0.3 per cent lower. Its leading chipmaker TSMC edged up 0.2 per cent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng edged up 0.2 per cent to 25,858.88. The Shanghai Composite index lost 0.6 per cent to 3,804.69. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.8 per cent to 8,967.70. India’s Sensex was mostly unchanged.

On Wednesday, the benchmark S&P 500 dropped 1.5 per cent and the Dow industrials fell 2.2 per cent. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index lost 1.7 per cent. Several chipmaking big names fell. Nvidia lost 3.6 per cent and AMD, or Advanced Micro Devices, shed 5.5 per cent. Broadcom declined 2.8 per cent. The US stocks traded lower also after the Federal Reserve decided to hold interest rates steady even as some members on the policymaking committee wanted to raise rates.

The Fed’s chairman, Kevin Warsh, reiterated his commitment to get inflation back to 2 per cent following years of faster-than-hoped increases in prices, but he also stuck to his plan of giving financial markets fewer clues about what the Fed may do with interest rates in the near future. With less guidance from the Fed, financial markets may be set for more volatile trading amid the uncertainty.

“Did the Fed take an explicit change in its policy rate today?” Warsh asked rhetorically in a news conference following the Fed’s decision. “No, but I think that’s the beginning of the story.” In the bond market, the yield of the US 10-year Treasury was at 4.68 per cent, up from 4.61 per cent late Tuesday. In other dealings early Thursday, the US dollar rose to 163.83 Japanese yen from 163.41 yen. The euro rose to $1.1475 from $1.1467.