Asian shares mostly gain, South Korea and Japan recover some losses from AI stock sell-offs

HONG KONG, July 21, (AP): Asian shares mostly gained on Tuesday, with markets in South Korea and Japan trading higher after recent declines due to heavy selling of stocks linked to artificial intelligence. US futures edged higher, while oil prices slipped. South Korea’s Kospi, which is heavily reliant on AI and chipmaking-related shares, jumped 3.6% to 6,747.95. It fell 4.5% a day earlier.

Samsung Electronics surged 6.8%, while memory chip maker SK Hynix gained 4.9%. The Kospi has gained more than 50% so far this year, but fell more than 20% over the past month as investors sold to lock in profits, wary of worries about a potential bubble in AI investments. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 added 3% to 66,067.91 after a holiday on Monday, recovering from some of its losses from last week.

Computer memory maker Kioxia Holdings surged 16.1%, while chip testing equipment maker Advantest jumped 7.5%. OpenAI investor SoftBank Group climbed 5.4%, while chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron added 2.1%. Taiwan’s Taiex, which also has benefited from the AI boom, was up 4.2%. Its advanced AI chipmaker TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., advanced 3.9%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng edged less than 0.1% higher to 25,151.15.

The Shanghai Composite index added 1.4% to 3,850.92. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 climbed less than 0.1% to 8,793.30. India’s Sensex gave up 0.4%. Oil prices fell early Tuesday after gaining the day before. Brent crude, the international standard, fell below $90 a barrel, down 1% to $88.33. But it’s still well above the roughly $72 per barrel level it was at before the war started in late February.

Benchmark US crude lost 0.6% at $81.97 a barrel. Early Tuesday, Iran attacked another tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for global oil and gas transport. The US announced another round of strikes targeting Iran for a 10th straight night. Iran has been retaliating against the U.S. strikes by targeting U.S. allies across the Middle East.

As the US and Iran traded fire, Iran’s interior minister traveled to Pakistan, a main mediator, for talks, but it’s still unclear if a new deal may be reached. "There’s some hope of de-escalation between the US and Iran,” ING commodities strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote in a commentary Tuesday. "This won’t be an easy task.

Large divisions remain between the US and Iran.” A naval blockade by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthis against Saudi Arabia has increased risks to oil supplies, they said. On Monday, Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 slipped 0.2% to 7,443.28. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.6% to 51,839.26, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite dipped less than 0.1% to 25,508.07.