Chip Selloff Extends to South Korea, Oil Declines: Markets Wrap

(Bloomberg) — A selloff in semiconductor stocks spread to South Korea, reviving concerns that the blistering rally in artificial intelligence shares this year may have gone too far, too fast. Brent fell to the lowest since before the start of the Middle East war.

South Korea’s Kospi — which contains many companies involved in AI infrastructure buildout — slumped almost 7%, before paring declines. Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. both dropped more than 6%, while Kioxia Holdings Corp. tumbled 13% in Japan after a blistering rally that had sent the stock up more than 650% this year. MSCI’s gauge of Asia Pacific shares slipped 0.8%.

Meta Platforms Inc.’s reported plans to build a cloud infrastructure business that would sell access to AI computing power and models fueled concern the company may have overbuilt its capacity. Separately, Apple Inc. is in talks to buy chips from two Chinese semiconductor makers, according to people familiar with the matter, which would hurt South Korean manufacturers.

“Meta considering selling its ‘excess compute’ suggests it may be struggling to find a good use for it or may have overbuilt,” said Vey-Sern Ling, managing director at Union Bancaire Privee. “That would have negative implications for the ‘picks and shovels’ in Korea and Japan markets.”

Elsewhere, Brent fell as much as 1.3% to $70.63 a barrel, the lowest level since Feb. 27, as flows through the vital Strait of Hormuz climbed. Treasuries held their losses from Wednesday, while the dollar steadied after two days of gains. Gold rose for a second day to trade above $4,060 an ounce after Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh said price risks have come down in recent weeks.

Warsh repeated his determination to bring inflation back to the US central bank’s 2% target. Speaking at the European Central Bank’s annual forum in Sintra, Portugal, he said inflation expectations had moderated over the past month. Warsh also reiterated the Fed’s commitment to restoring price stability, reinforcing expectations policymakers are in no rush to raise interest rates.

While the selloff in semiconductor stocks continued to drive sentiment in the equities market, investors took some comfort from Warsh’s comments and other central bankers suggesting inflation risks have become more balanced. Attention now shifts to the US jobs report on Thursday for fresh signals on the policy outlook after Warsh’s remarks damped expectations of a July rate increase.

“At a minimum, his comments provided no fuel for speculation on a near-term July rate hike, and in our view suggest the new Fed chair – while keeping all options open meeting by meeting – does not currently see cause for an immediate hike,” said Krishna Guha at Evercore.

Bloomberg Economics expects June payrolls to rise at a robust pace, exceeding even May’s strong gain. Hiring likely was especially strong in leisure and hospitality — boosted by the World Cup — while government employment should post its fastest increase of the year.

Some stability came to the markets as US equity-index futures erased earlier losses to turn positive. Contracts for the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index rose 0.3%. European shares, less exposed to semiconductors compared with Asia, were also set for some modest gains before Thursday’s US payrolls data.

Thursday’s Asian stock losses came after a roller-coaster ride for tech shares from Seoul to New York in late June. South Korean stocks swung from euphoria to anxiety in gut-wrenching trading that underscored how fragile the AI rally has become.

“Movements in Asian equities continue to be sensitive around the sustainability of the AI capex buildout and concerns of compute oversupply following Meta headlines,” said Hugh Lam, an investment strategist at Betashares.

Corporate Highlights:

Meta Platforms Inc. is developing plans for a cloud infrastructure business that will sell access to AI computing power and models, setting up a new vector of competition with industry leaders like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Alphabet Inc.’s Google was ordered to pay almost $2 billion to Klarna Group Plc’s Pricerunner unit in a dispute over the search-engine giant’s abuse of power in the market for comparison shopping services. Some of the main moves in markets:

Stocks

S&P 500 futures rose 0.1% as of 12:53 p.m. Tokyo time Nikkei 225 futures (OSE) fell 1.5% Japan’s Topix rose 0.7% Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was little changed Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.2% The Shanghai Composite fell 0.9% Euro Stoxx 50 futures were little changed Currencies

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed The euro was little changed at $1.1380 The Japanese yen was little changed at 162.51 per dollar The offshore yuan was little changed at 6.7894 per dollar Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin rose 1.4% to $60,917.19 Ether rose 1.3% to $1,637.39 Bonds

The yield on 10-year Treasuries was little changed at 4.48% Japan’s 10-year yield advanced 3.5 basis points to 2.740% Australia’s 10-year yield advanced three basis points to 4.82% Commodities

West Texas Intermediate crude fell 1.2% to $67.77 a barrel Spot gold rose 1% to $4,072.07 an ounce This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.

–With assistance from Charlotte Yang, Carmeli Argana, Sangmi Cha and Bing Hong Lok.

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