Hong Kong, Jul 20: Asian shares were mostly higher on Monday but South Korea’s Kospi fell nearly 5 per cent as investors unloaded more stocks linked to artificial intelligence.
Japan’s markets were closed Monday for a holiday and US futures were mixed.
Oil prices jumped more than 2 per cent, with Brent crude above USD 90 a barrel as the US and Iran moved closer to resuming an all-out war. Early Monday, the US announced more attacks for a ninth straight night. Iran has been responding to US strikes by hitting US-allies across the Middle East.
Brent crude, the international standard, rose 2.6 per cent to USD 90.40 per barrel and benchmark US crude climbed 2.2 per cent to USD 83.58 per barrel.
“The US and Iran continue to exchange strikes, which are proving to be deadly for both sides,” ING commodities strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote in a commentary Monday. “If this escalation goes unchecked, we could return to an environment of wide-scale attacks across the Persian Gulf.”
Tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for global oil transport, have nearly ground to a halt, adding to pressures on supplies, they noted.
In Asian share trading the Kospi, which has benefited substantially from the global AI frenzy, sank 4.9 per cent to 6,490.97. Two of its most valuable stocks booked losses. Samsung Electronics lost 4.4 per cent, while memory chip maker SK Hynix fell 3.3 per cent.
Taiwan’s Taiex, also heavy in AI-related stocks, edged less than 0.1 per cent lower as its leading chipmaker, TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, climbed 2 per cent. It had fallen 7.3 per cent on Friday after the company announced it plans to spend an additional USD 100 billion to expand its chipmaking capacity in the US.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 2.1 per cent to 25,105.78, while the Shanghai Composite index gained 1.2 per cent to 3,808.39.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged 0.2 per cent higher to 8,815.30.
India’s Sensex slipped 0.9 per cent.
AI-related shares including chipmaking stocks declined on Friday, pulling world markets lower. Pledges of huge spending on AI are fuelling worries the sector may be in a bubble, and many investors have opted to sell to lock in profits from recent big gains.
Markets were also shaken by the rollout of another powerful Chinese AI model, this time by Beijing-based Moonshot AI.
The impact of the new Kimi K3 open-source AI model was similar to when China’s “ DeepSeek moment” rattled world markets in early 2025. It was viewed as another sign of how lower-cost, capable Chinese AI models are increasingly challenging rivals like Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s GPT.
On Wall Street, the benchmark S&P 500 ended the week down 1 per cent at 7,457.69. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.8 per cent to 52,146.42, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite lost 1.4 per cent to 25,520.24.
Chipmaking stocks took a hit, with Nvidia falling 2.2 per cent, while Broadcom and AMD, or Advanced Micro Devices, fell 1 per cent.
SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company, dropped 5.4 per cent after dropping below its initial public offering price of USD 135 a share, reaching its lowest point since its stock began public trading on the Nasdaq last month.
In other dealings, the US dollar fell to 162.37 Japanese yen from 162.43 yen. The euro was trading at USD 1.1446, up from USD 1.1438.(AP)
