Asian shares retreat, tracking tech losses on Wall Street

San Francisco Chronicle​

13 hours ago

TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares retreated on Wednesday, tracking a decline on Wall Street led by technology shares including Nvidia and other stars that have been riding the mania surrounding artificial-intelligence.
Benchmarks fell in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, pulled lower by selling of computer chip makers.
Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei 225 declined 1.7% to 42,787.28.
Japan reported its exports fell slightly more than expected in July, pressured by higher tariffs on goods shipped to the U.S.
Computer-chip equipment makers Advantest plunged 6.6% and Disco Corp. dropped 4.7%. Chip maker Tokyo Electron lost 1.9%. and Lasertec Corp. lost 1.8%.
The Taiex in Taiwan fell 2.4% after chip maker TSMC dropped 3.8%.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng slipped 0.6% to 24,980.20 while the Shanghai Composite index edged 0.1% lower to 3,725.22 after China's central bank opted to keep the benchmark interest rate unchanged, as markets had expected.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.2% to 8,917.60.
South Korea's Kospi dropped 1.4% to 3,096.09, as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un condemned South Korean-U.S. military drills that began this week, and vowed a rapid expansion of his nuclear forces to counter rivals, according to North Korean state media.
On Wednesday, the S&P 500 fell 0.6% to 6,411.37, for a third straight loss. It remains near its all-time high set last week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added less than 0.1% to 44,922.27, and the Nasdaq composite slumped 1.5% to 21,314.95.
The heaviest weight on the market was Nvidia, whose chips are powering much of the move into AI. It sank 3.5%.
Another AI darling, Palantir Technologies, dropped 9.4% for the largest loss in the S&P 500. It's seen bets build up sharply that its stock price will drop, according to S3 Partners. Only Meta Platforms has seen a bigger increase this year in what's called 'short interest,' where traders essentially bet a stock's price will fall. Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, sank 2.1%.
Criticism has been rising that stock prices across Wall Street have shot too high, too fast since hitting a bottom in April and have become too expensive. Palantir's stock came into Tuesday with a tremendous gain of 130% for the year so far. The priciness of AI-related shares and potential for further trade restrictions in the strategically important chip industry prompted investors to sell.
Home Depot's gain of 3.2% was the biggest reason the Dow did better than other indexes. The retailer reported results for the latest quarter that were a bit short of what analysts expected, but it delivered growth in revenue and stood by its prior forecasts for revenue and profit over the full year.
The week's headliner for Wall Street is likely arriving on Friday. That's when the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, will give a highly anticipated speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The setting has been home to big policy announcements from the Fed in the past, and the hope on Wall Street is that Powell may hint that cuts to interest rates are coming soon.
The Fed has kept its main interest rate steady this year, primarily because of the fear of the possibility that President Donald Trump's tariffs could push inflation higher. But a surprisingly weak report on job growth across the country may be superseding that.
Traders on Wall Street widely expect the Fed to cut interest rates at its next meeting in September in order to give the economy a boost. Treasury yields have come down notably in the bond market as a result, and they eased on Tuesday.
Strategists at Bank of America warn that Powell may not sound as inclined to cut interest rates as the market is expecting. He could remain non-committal and discuss the possibility of a worst-case scenario for the economy called 'stagflation.' The Fed has no good tool to fix that situation, where the economy stagnates at the same time as inflation remains high.
In other dealings early Wednesday, benchmark U.S. crude added 12 cents to $61.89 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gained 11 cents to $65.90 a barrel.