HONG KONG — European shares are mostly lower after a retreat in Asia that brought sharp declines in Japan and South Korea following a sell-off of technology stocks on Wall Street.
Oil prices wavered after the U.S. military launched attacks against Iran following the crash of an Army helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz that President Donald Trump blamed on Tehran.
The latest flaring of fighting again dimmed hopes for progress toward a permanent end to the war, which has lasted more than three months and roiled markets already wavering from spates of heavy selling of stocks in companies linked to the boom in artificial intelligence.
With prospects for fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz in doubt, oil prices resumed their climb after rising and then falling earlier in the day.
Brent crude, the international standard, gained 0.4 per cent to US$91.78 per barrel. It was trading at approximately $70 a barrel before the war began in late February.
Benchmark U.S. crude was 0.1 per cent higher at $88.31 per barrel.
“The situation remains highly volatile,” ING commodities strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote in a Wednesday note. “This once again demonstrates the difficulty Iran and the U.S. face in working toward a sustainable ceasefire that allows for the free flow of vessels through the Strait of Hormuz.”
They noted that demand tends to be strong in the early summer, adding to upward pressure on prices.
The future for the S&P 500 declined 0.6 per cent while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 0.5 per cent lower.
Britain’s FTSE 100 edged 0.1 per cent lower to 10,223.39. Germany’s DAX shed 0.3 per cent to 24,368.28, while France’s CAC 40 rose less than 0.1 per cent to 8,210.03.
South Korea’s Kospi gave up 4.5 per cent, to 7,730.82, after surging the day before. Samsung Electronics, which makes memory and logic chips and is the country’s most valuable company, sank 6.1 per cent. Shares of chipmaker SK Hynix tumbled 7.5 per cent.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 dropped 1.9 per cent to 64,179.27, after data showed Japan’s producer price index, a measure for prices at the wholesale level, rose 6.3 per cent in May from a year before. That’s the fastest pace in more than three years.
Shares of technology and telecommunications giant SoftBank Group, which has a strong AI focus, lost 8.3 per cent. Chip equipment maker Advantest lost 4.2 per cent, but Tokyo Electron advanced 3.2 per cent.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.6 per cent to 24,407.96, while the Shanghai Composite index slipped 0.4 per cent to 3,993.23. Official data released Wednesday showed that China’s producer prices rose to nearly a four-year high of 3.9 per cent in May compared with a year earlier.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 traded 0.6 per cent higher to 8,653.30.
Taiwan’s Taiex was 3.3 per cent lower, while India’s Sensex climbed 0.8 per cent.
On Tuesday, Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 fell 0.3 per cent to 7,386.65. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.2 per cent to 50,872.11, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite dropped 1 per cent to 25,678.82.
U.S. chipmaker Micron Technology went from an early 4 per cent gain to a 10 per cent drop before closing 1.4 per cent lower. Shares of Marvell Technology sank 7.6 per cent, and AMD sank 3 per cent.
Investors are also monitoring updates on U.S. inflation that are set for this week as the Iran war is driving up global energy prices.
In other dealings early Wednesday, the U.S. dollar rose to 160.40 Japanese yen from 160.36 yen. The euro was trading at US$1.1552, up from $1.1543.
Chan Ho-him, The Associated Press
