By Samuel Indyk and Rae Wee <\/p>\n
LONDON, July 17 (Reuters) – A prolonged selloff for chipmakers continued to ripple through global stock markets on Friday, triggering losses in Asia and Europe and setting up steep falls in the United States as investors abruptly reassessed the durability \u200cof the artificial-intelligence-driven rally. <\/p>\n
Renewed military strikes in the Middle East were also weighing on risk sentiment, keeping oil prices elevated and reigniting concerns about \u200cinflation and growth. <\/p>\n
In Europe, the STOXX 600 fell 0.5%, with major bourses in Paris, Frankfurt and London all trading lower. <\/p>\n
In the U.S., Nasdaq futures slumped 1.7% while S&P 500 futures fell 0.8%. <\/p>\n
Losses \u200bwere starker across Asia, with MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares excluding Japan down more than 3%, while the Nikkei tumbled 4%, leaving it down 12% from a recent peak. <\/p>\n
Taiwan’s stock market bore the brunt of the selloff, plunging more than 6% for its worst day since U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, while China’s blue-chip index fell 3.6%. <\/p>\n
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index was down 1.8%, and a 4.4% slide in the Hang Seng Tech Index marked its sharpest fall since \u200cApril 2025. <\/p>\n
Europe’s relative lack of a technology hardware sector \u2060has meant it tends to be more insulated than other markets from a sharp selloff in tech stocks. <\/p>\n
“From a European perspective, there’s less exposure towards tech and more exposure to defensives and staples and that is why it looks a little \u2060better,” said Lars Skovgaard, investment strategist at Danske Bank. <\/p>\n
The selloff came even as Taiwan’s TSMC said second-quarter profit blew past forecasts. And ASML, the world’s dominant supplier of equipment needed to make high-tech computer chips, raised its 2026 sales forecasts earlier this week. <\/p>\n
“Retail investors have borrowed to trade in this really impressive AI rally, so I think \u200bthe unwinding \u200bof leveraged positions will definitely exaggerate the decline as well. It will feed into \u200bthe market,” said Fabien Yip, a market analyst at IG. <\/p>\n
Markets \u200cin South Korea were closed on Friday for a holiday, a day after authorities said they would temporarily ban new listings of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that are tied to certain major technology firms, while raising minimum required deposits for retail investors to invest in such products, in an effort to curb volatility. <\/p>\n
OIL CLIMBS AGAIN <\/p>\n
In commodities, oil prices were on the rise, with Brent crude futures up 2% at $86.01 a barrel, while U.S. crude advanced 2.5% to $80.92 per barrel. For the week, Brent and U.S. crude futures were set to rise more than 11% each, marking their largest gains since April. <\/p>\n
Iran said it launched fresh attacks on U.S. \u200cfacilities in the Gulf on Friday after a sixth consecutive night of U.S. strikes on \u200bIranian military facilities. <\/p>\n
“You don’t see appetite for adding risk right now,” said Danske Bank’s Skovgaard. <\/p>\n
“As \u200blong as there is no progress on oil price developments, then you \u200bdon’t need to buy into the market. For that, it’s just another negative.” <\/p>\n
ASSESSING THE FED RATE PATH <\/p>\n
The dollar held steady \u200con Friday and was set to end the week little changed \u200bas receding expectations of Federal Reserve rate \u200bincreases this year were offset by renewed safe-haven demand. <\/p>\n
Investors are now pricing in roughly 27 basis points worth of Fed hikes by December, following benign U.S. CPI and PPI readings this week. <\/p>\n
The euro was flat at $1.1438, while sterling fetched $1.3451 as Andy Burnham was confirmed as the new leader of \u200bBritain’s governing Labour Party on Friday, replacing Keir Starmer. Burnham \u200cwill formally become prime minister on Monday, with markets closely watching his pick for finance minister. <\/p>\n
The yen, meanwhile, languished near a 40-year \u200blow and last stood at 162.31 per dollar, prompting renewed jawboning from Japanese Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama to try to support the \u200bcurrency. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Samuel Indyk and Rae Wee; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus, Kirsten Donovan) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Samuel Indyk and Rae Wee LONDON, July 17 (Reuters) – A prolonged selloff for chipmakers continued to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":807906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48,152785,1376,3456,9891,19676,3097],"class_list":["post-807905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-danske-bank","tag-donald-trump","tag-europe","tag-oil-prices","tag-retail-investors","tag-stock-markets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=807905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}