By CHAN HO-HIM and MATT OTT AP Business Writers
Tech stocks appeared to be headed for another sell-off before the bell with inflation anxiety hammering that high-growth sector ahead of the U.S. earnings season.
Futures for the S&P 500 fell 0.2% before the opening bell, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.3%. Nasdaq futures tumbled 1%.
Artificial intelligence stocks were down again after taking a beating a day earlier.
CoreWeave, which offers AI computing power to customers over the cloud, fell another 3.8% early after tumbling 15.5% a day earlier, its worst day since February. GE Vernova, which is hoping to electrify power-hungry data centers, dropped 3.2% after a 6.2% decline on Wednesday and Oracle sank 1.6%, adding to its nearly 9% loss in the previous session.
Chipmaker and AI darling Nvidia fell 1.6% in early trading, as did Broadcom, while Advanced Micro Devices retreated 3.1%.
The yield on 10-year bonds eased to 5.09% from 5.32%, but remains elevated. Higher bond yields that have made borrowing more expensive could make it more difficult for companies to raise cash to build data centers and fill them with AI chips.
The latest inflation figures showed Wednesday that prices remain well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, putting in play another potential interest rate hike before the end of the year, which also puts pressure on the equities market.
The government’s latest report on wholesale prices, the producer price index, arrives Thursday along with another trove of corporate earnings reports.
In Asia, South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index lost 7.6% to 5,554.22. It plummeted more than 16% over the past month and was well below the 9,000 mark that it crossed in June at its all-time high driven by optimism over the global artificial intelligence frenzy.
Samsung Electronics slid 9.5% and South Korean memory chipmaker SK Hynix plunged 11.1%.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 tumbled 4.9% to 64,425.95. OpenAI investor SoftBank Group lost 9.3%. Chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron dropped 7.8%, and memory chipmaker Kioxia Holdings lost 12.3%.
Taiwan’s Taiex, which also benefited from the AI boom, fell 3.4%. Its leading chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., or TSMC, dropped 2% ahead of its earnings report. TSMC reported on Thursday another record profit for the latest quarter, which was better than what analysts had expected, and the company said AI demand remains very strong.
“The problem for heavily technology-weighted markets such as Korea and Taiwan, to a lesser extent Japan, is that any risk to perceived AI spending growth may lead to slower demand growth for chips and equipment,” said Lorraine Tan, director of equity research for Asia at Morningstar.
“The key issue is a possible mismatch between the market’s growth expectations for the tech sector and what may eventuate,” she said.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 1% to 24,062.72. The Shanghai Composite index slipped 1.6% to 3,707.48.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged down 0.1% to 8,719.70.
At midday in Europe, Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.7%, France’s CAC 40 gave back 0.3% and Germany’s DAX was down 0.4%.
Oil prices fell as tensions and uncertainties surrounding global oil supply and the situation in the Middle East dragged on. Brent crude, the international standard, declined more than 1% to $104.91 per barrel. That’s still elevated compared with the approximately $72 per barrel level before the start of the Iran war in late February.
U.S. crude was up 23 cents a barrel to $95.32.