Asian shares mostly decline with South Korea’s Kospi down 6.6%, while oil prices slip

HONG KONG (AP) — Asian shares were mostly lower Thursday and oil prices slipped despite a flurry of strikes between the U.S. and Iran.

U.S. futures edged higher.

Selling of AI-related shares weighed on benchmarks in South Korea and Japan.

An interest rate hike by the Bank of Korea also contributed to a 6.6% tumble for the Kospi, to 6,816.70. It was the first rate hike by the BOK since 2023 and was aimed at helping curb inflationary pressures due to the Iran war.

Memory chipmaker SK Hynix dropped 11.2%, while Samsung Electronics fell 8.2%.

Taiwan’s Taiex lost 0.3% ahead of the release of an earnings report by Taiwan computer chipmaker TSMC, which is often seen as a barometer for the global industry and for the boom in artificial intelligence.

U.S. futures edged higher.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 fell 2.9% to 66,767.64. Shares of Japanese memory chipmaker Kioxia plummeted 13.5%. Chipmaking equipment company Tokyo Electron dropped 5.2%, while chip testing equipment maker Advantest gave up 5.6%.

SoftBank Group shed 6.4%.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was a regional outlier, gaining 1.7% to 25,111.22. Alibaba’s Hong Kong-traded shares climbed 4.4%, after China’s cyberspace regulator said Wednesday it had approved the Apple Intelligence AI tool for use in China. An Alibaba spokesperson said its Qwen model will be integrated into Apple Intelligence.

The Shanghai Composite index dropped 0.9% to 3,921.20.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged 0.2% lower, to 8,820.50.

India’s Sensex climbed 0.3%.

Oil prices were lower early Thursday but were still at elevated levels as the U.S. intensified its strikes against Iran, while Iran targeted missile and drone fire on Kuwait and Bahrain.

Brent crude, the international standard, dropped 0.4% to $84.55 a barrel. It was around $72 per barrel in late February before the war began.

Benchmark U.S. crude was down 0.2% at $79.34 per barrel.

“Oil prices managed to eke out a third day of gains amid few signs of de-escalation between the U.S. and Iran,” ING commodities strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote in a commentary Thursday.

Rising U.S.-Iran tensions are “having a meaningful impact on vessel flows from the Persian Gulf,” they said, with tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for global oil transportation, still under pressure.

On Wednesday, Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 rose 0.4% to 7,572.40. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 0.3% to 52,658.64, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite added 0.6% to 26,269.23.

SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company, slipped below its initial public offering, or IPO, price of $135 a piece, before recovering some of its losses.

A U.S. report showing inflation slowed in June and strong earnings results from American investment company BlackRock among other major firms also helped push the market higher. BlackRock’s shares rose 6.6% after it reported stronger-than-expected quarterly revenue and profit.

In other dealings early Thursday, the U.S. dollar fell to 162.09 Japanese yen from 162.19 yen. The euro fell slightly to $1.1467, from $1.1464.

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AP Business Writers Stan Choe and Matt Ott contributed to this report.