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World Shares Lower After US Stocks Fall11/05 04:48
Shares in Europe and Asia retreated Wednesday following a decline on Wall
Street spurred by selling of Big Tech shares.
BANGKOK (AP) -- Shares in Europe and Asia retreated Wednesday following a
decline on Wall Street spurred by selling of Big Tech shares.
But benchmarks in Asia recovered much of the ground lost earlier in the day,
when Tokyo's Nikkei fell nearly 5%. It recovered to close 2.5% lower, at
50,212.27.
In early European trading, Germany's DAX gave up 0.7% to 23,777.85, while
the CAC 40 in Paris shed 0.4% to 8,039.32. Britain's FTSE 100 edged 0.1% lower,
to 9,707.18.
The future for the S&P 500 slipped 0.1%, while that for the Dow Jones
Industrial Average edged 0.1% higher.
The spillover from Wall Street was evident. Shares in energy and tech giant
SoftBank Group sank 10% on jitters over its investments in artificial
intelligence. Computer chip maker Tokyo Electron dropped 4.1%, while stock in
Advantest Corp., a maker of semiconductor testing equipment, lost 6%.
Toyota Motor Corp. lost 3.7%. The company reported a 7% decline in its
profit for the April-September period, but raised its earnings forecast for the
year, despite U.S. President Donald Trump's higher tariffs on imports of autos
and auto parts.
South Korea's Kospi declined 2.9% to 4,004.42 as Samsung Electronics shed
4.1%. SK Hynix, which had logged major gains thanks to plans to develop
artificial intelligence with chip maker Nvidia, lost 1.2%.
Chinese markets wavered between gains and losses. The Shanghai Composite
index recovered from modest earlier losses to edge 0.2% higher, to 3,969.25.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng declined 0.1% to 25,935.41.
Investors apparently took fright from heavy selling of high tech related
shares overnight on Wall Street. The technology sector has been driving gains
this year, and huge values for companies including Nvidia and Microsoft give
them outsized influence over the broader market's direction.
The price of gold, which tends to climb in times of uncertainty, jumped 0.8%
to $3,990.90 an ounce.
"The rally that began in April is finally feeling its age. What we are
seeing today wasn't just a dip; it was a full-scale reality check," Stephen
Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.
"This wasn't the usual intraday shake-out. It felt more like the oxygen
suddenly thinning at the top of a mountain that everyone assumed had no
summit," he said.
Palantir Technologies, which creates software platforms for data, fell 7.9%
despite reporting results that beat analysts' forecasts. Chip maker Nvidia also
reversed course from a day earlier, falling 4%, while Microsoft fell 0.5%.
Other sectors also declined, leading the S&P 500 to give up 1.2%. The index
is still up more than 15% for the year.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.5% and the technology heavy
Nasdaq fell 2%.
Wall Street remains focused on corporate earnings. Roughly three out of
every four companies within the S&P 500 have reported their latest results, and
most have been better than analysts expected.
Several big companies will report their latest financial results later this
week, including McDonald's, Expedia Group and Qualcomm.
The latest round of corporate profit reports and forecasts have taken on
more significance for Wall Street due to the U.S. government shutdown.
Investors and economists are trying to gauge the health and direction of the
U.S. economy without the latest economic updates on inflation and employment.
Outside of earnings, Tesla fell 5.1% after Norway's sovereign wealth fund,
one of the electric car maker's biggest investors, said Tuesday that it will
vote against a proposed compensation package that could pay CEO Elon Musk as
much as $1 trillion over a decade.
In other dealings early Wednesday, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 14 cents to
$60.42 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, shed 14 cents to
$64.29 per barrel.
The dollar fell to 153.53 Japanese yen from 153.66 yen. The euro rose to
$1.1495 from $1.1482.
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