Oil prices bounced between gains and losses on Thursday and world shares were mixed, with South Korea’s Kospi falling again after losing more than 16% 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% to $87.92 per barrel after rising earlier. It was trading around $72 a barrel in late February, before the Iran war began.
Benchmark U.S. crude lost 0.3% to $84.25 per barrel.
The future for the S&P 500 was up 0.4% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.2%.
In early European trading, Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.2% to 10,930.40. France’s CAC 40 surged 0.8% 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% to 5,593.56, after falling 10.8% on Tuesday and nearly 6% on Wednesday. The benchmark has fallen more than 38% from its all-time closing high of more than 9,100 in June, though it’s still up nearly 30% so far this year.
Samsung Electronics fell 0.7%, 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% after sinking more than 9% on Wednesday, when it also reported a record 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% to 61,867.43, recovering some of its losses after falling 1.5% a day earlier. Open-AI investor SoftBank Group fell 2.5%. But computer chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron climbed 4.5%. Memory chipmaker Kioxia Holdings added 2.9%.
Taiwan’s Taiex, which was also lifted by the AI boom, closed 0.3% lower. Its leading chipmaker TSMC edged up 0.2%.
