HONG KONG (AP) 鈥� Asian shares mostly declined Thursday on heavy selling of computer chip stocks, while U.S. futures were little changed after modest .
Oil prices fell after negotiators from the U.S. and Iran from Qatar and Pakistan on Wednesday, as traders eyed developments in achieving a permanent end to the .
South Korea鈥檚 benchmark Kospi index sank 5.1% to 7,877.45. with chip-related shares trading lower. Memory chip maker SK Hynix lost 7.7% and Samsung Electronics tumbled 6.4%.
Tokyo鈥檚 Nikkei 225 lost 1.5% to 69,443.16. Shares of chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron shed 5.6%.
Taiwan鈥檚 Taiex declined 1.1% as chipmaking giant TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., fell 1.8%.
Hong Kong鈥檚 Hang Seng was up 0.8% to 23,060.63. Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD鈥檚 shares rose 8.7% after it reported its sales rose for a second straight month. The Shanghai Composite index fell 0.9% to 4,075.58.
Australia鈥檚 S&P/ASX 200 edged 0.1% lower to 8,710.30.
India’s Sensex climbed 0.5%.
Surging demand for artificial intelligence has pushed many AI and tech stocks higher in recent months, with markets in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan reaping big gains. The Kospi and Nikkei 225 have gained about 85% and 34%, respectively, so far this year.
However, concerns over a potential glut in supply given the massive investments made by Big Tech companies in the U.S. and elsewhere have been .
On Wednesday, chip stocks in the U.S. mostly fell. Micron Technology gave up 10.6%, Intel sank 9%, AMD, or Advanced Micro Devices, dropped 6.9%, Broadcom lost 2.2% and Nvidia slipped 1.3%.
The S&P 500, Wall Street鈥檚 benchmark, fell 0.2% to 7,483.23. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped less than 0.1% to 52,305.24, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite dropped 0.7% to 26,040.03.
鈥淎I demand may continue to grow but at a slower pace than expected,鈥� economists Megan Fisher and Vicky Redwood at Capital Economics wrote in a note on Thursday. 鈥淔irms and investors may be underestimating the barriers to AI adoption.鈥�
While transformative technologies can be adopted widely, they may still fall short of generating financial returns soon enough in order to justify the massive scale of investments made by many firms, the economists said.
Oil prices fell early Thursday, trading at levels below where they were before the Iran war began in late February. Hopes have risen that crude supplies will improve markedly with the reopening of the , the narrow waterway that鈥檚 key for the world鈥檚 oil transport, even though the number of ships crossing the strait is still limited.
Brent crude, the international standard, fell 1% to $70.89 per barrel, lower than the roughly $72 a barrel before the start of the war. Benchmark U.S. crude also fell 1%, to $67.91 per barrel.
In other dealings, the U.S. dollar was trading at 162.39 Japanese yen, down from 162.58 yen, after the yen fell to a four-decade low against the dollar on Wednesday. The euro was trading at $1.1387, up from $1.1377.
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AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed to this report.
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