By Samuel Indyk and Rae Wee <\/p>\n
LONDON, July 17 (Reuters) – Another brutal selloff for chipmakers rippled through global stock markets on Friday, triggering a rout across Asia and a fall in European equity indexes as investors abruptly reassessed the durability of the \u200cartificial-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 inflation \u200cand growth. <\/p>\n
In Europe, the STOXX 600 fell 0.7%, with major bourses in Paris and Frankfurt trading lower. Britain’s FTSE was flat. <\/p>\n
Losses were starker across Asia, with MSCI’s broadest index of \u200bAsia-Pacific shares excluding Japan down 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 slid 1.8%, and a 4.4% drop in the Hang Seng Tech Index marked its sharpest fall since April 2025. <\/p>\n
Europe’s relative lack of a technology \u200chardware sector has meant it tends to be \u2060more 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 better,” said Lars Skovgaard, \u2060investment 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 the \u200bunwinding \u200bof leveraged positions will definitely exaggerate the decline as well. It will feed into \u200bthe market,” said Fabien Yip, a market analyst at \u200cIG. <\/p>\n
Markets in 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
In the U.S., Nasdaq futures slumped 2.2% while S&P 500 futures fell 1.1%. <\/p>\n
OIL CLIMBS AGAIN <\/p>\n
In commodities, oil prices were on the rise, with Brent crude futures up 0.6% at $84.75 a barrel, while U.S. crude advanced 1.1% to $79.8 per barrel. <\/p>\n
Iran said it launched fresh attacks on U.S. facilities in the \u200cGulf on Friday after a sixth consecutive night of U.S. strikes on Iranian military \u200bfacilities. <\/p>\n
For the week, Brent and U.S. crude futures were set to rise more than \u200b11% each, marking their largest gains since April. <\/p>\n
“Some parts of the \u200bmarket are waiting on the sidelines,” said Danske Bank’s Skovgaard. <\/p>\n
“As long as there is no progress on oil price \u200cdevelopments, then you don’t need to buy into the market. \u200bFor that, it’s just another negative.” <\/p>\n
ASSESSING THE \u200bFED RATE PATH <\/p>\n
The dollar held steady on Friday and was set to end the week little changed as receding expectations of Federal Reserve rate increases this year were offset by renewed safe-haven demand. <\/p>\n
Investors are now pricing in roughly 26 basis points worth of Fed hikes \u200bby December, following benign U.S. CPI and PPI \u200creadings this week. <\/p>\n
The euro was flat at $1.1438, while sterling fetched $1.3451. <\/p>\n
The yen, meanwhile, languished near a 40-year low and last stood at \u200b162.39 per dollar, prompting renewed jawboning from Japanese Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama to try to support the currency. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Samuel Indyk \u200band Rae Wee; Editing by Kevin Buckland, Shri Navaratnam and Thomas Derpinghaus) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Samuel Indyk and Rae Wee LONDON, July 17 (Reuters) – Another brutal selloff for chipmakers rippled through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[114,92879,85,46,6807,10356,55863,1760],"class_list":["post-545848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-danske-bank","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-oil-prices","tag-retail-investors","tag-selloff","tag-stock-markets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}