New York (AFP) – Tech stocks drove global equity markets on Monday, with steep selling last week having a knock-on effect in Asia but attracting US investors to buy the dip. Oil prices rose moderately after Iran and Israel exchanged strikes against one another despite a purported ceasefire. The Israeli-Iran strikes were the first since a shaky ceasefire in April put five weeks of war on hold. The attacks sparked fears that escalation could unleash a new full-scale Middle East conflict, but both sides said they have halted hostilities — for now.
The world’s main crude contracts, Brent North Sea and West Texas Intermediate, surged by more than five percent in Asian trading hours but eased later in the day, logging gains of 1.3 percent and 0.8 percent respectively. Wall Street stocks recovered from a sharp sell-off on Friday, with investors looking to pick up tech stocks at cheaper prices, analysts said. Last week’s rout came as strong US jobs data fueled bets on a Federal Reserve rate hike and as some investors in the tech sector booked their profits.
“It was not unreasonable to expect a little bit of dip-buying activity after the very sloppy close that we had on Friday,” said Steve Sosnick of Interactive Brokers. Patrick O’Hare of Briefing.com noted that some of the buying was “purely reflexive, with traders betting Friday’s sell-off was nothing more than an overdue drawdown for an extremely overbought market.” The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite Index closed up by 0.9 percent, with the S&P 500 adding 0.3 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, however, lost ground, edging down by 0.2 percent.
Artificial intelligence (AI)-related stocks made the most gains in US trading, with chip giant Nvidia, the world’s largest company by market capitalization, rising almost two percent, having dropped more than six percent on Friday. Its valuation climbed back above the symbolic $5 trillion mark. Other major names in the sector also rebounded on Wall Street, including Intel, AMD, Micron, and Qualcomm.
Asian trading earlier in the day, however, took its cues from the Wall Street tech slump on Friday. Seoul’s Kospi index fell more than eight percent to lead a rout across the region. Shares in the chipmaker Samsung dived more than 10 percent, and its rival SK Hynix shed 7.7 percent. Tokyo’s stock market lost almost four percent Monday, and Hong Kong closed down 1.2 percent.
Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at trading group Swissquote, noted that “the bloodbath across tech is not only due to strong jobs data,” adding that “investors who rode the chip wave would be tempted to take their profits and free up cash to jump on the SpaceX IPO” this week. The rockets-to-AI behemoth led by Elon Musk aims to raise $75 billion in the biggest initial public offering ever, as the world’s richest person pursues data centers in space and a trip to Mars.
Europe’s main markets ended the day mostly lower. Elsewhere, bitcoin hovered around $63,400 after sinking below $60,000 on Friday to its lowest level since October 2024. Following Donald Trump’s US presidential election win in November of that year, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency had soared to record highs thanks to his vocal support for the sector.
– Key figures at around 2000 GMT –
Brent North Sea Crude: UP 1.3 percent at $94.25 a barrel
West Texas Intermediate: UP 0.8 percent at $91.30 a barrel
New York – DOW: DOWN 0.2 percent at 50,786.01 points (close)
New York – S&P 500: UP 0.3 percent at 7,405.73 (close)
New York – Nasdaq Composite: UP 0.9 percent at 25,929.66 (close)
London – FTSE 100: UP less than 0.1 percent at 10,373.20 (close)
Paris – CAC 40: DOWN 0.2 percent at 8,199.29 (close)
Frankfurt – DAX: DOWN 0.6 percent at 24,616.22 (close)
Seoul – Kospi: DOWN 8.3 percent at 7,484.41 (close)
Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 3.9 percent at 64,024.60 (close)
Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 1.2 percent at 24,657.06 (close)
Shanghai – Composite: DOWN 1.7 percent at 3,959.34 (close)
Euro/dollar: UP at $1.1531 from $1.1520 on Friday
Pound/dollar: UP at $1.3341 from $1.3333
Dollar/yen: DOWN at 160.21 yen from 160.23 yen
Euro/pound: UP at 86.44 pence from 86.41 pence
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© 2024 AFP
