TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares mostly fell in cautious trading Wednesday, although market interest in computer chips and artificial intelligence continued to support some global shares.
Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 declined less than 0.1% to finish at 67,744.29. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 declined 0.6% to 8,727.90. South Korea's Kospi, which has undergone some volatile trading lately, fell 0.4% to 6,008.81. Hong Kong's Hang Seng was little changed, falling less than 0.1% to 24,342.52, while the Shanghai Composite dipped nearly 0.9% to 3,767.23.
Wall Street indexes finished little changed near their records Tuesday. The first big batch of summertime profit reports from U.S. companies made waves on Wall Street after topping analysts’ expectations, but many canceled each other out.
The S&P 500 edged down by less than 0.1% and pulled a bit further from its all-time high set last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 180 points, or 0.3%, while the Nasdaq composite dipped 0.2%.
Goldman Sachs jumped more than 4% at the start of trading after the bank delivered a profit for July through September that blew past analysts’ expectations. But its stock quickly erased all of it and then flipped between gains and losses before finishing with a dip of 0.2%.
Expectations are high for profits across all kinds of U.S. companies. Analysts are forecasting overall growth of nearly 30% for companies in the S&P 500 during the summer from a year earlier, according to FactSet.
And companies need to hit those high numbers to justify the record-setting runs for their stock prices despite the many worries on Wall Street about high inflation, increased pressure from the bond market and the conflicts in the Middle East.
Worries have been high for a while about whether chip stock prices have shot too high in the frenzy around AI technology.
China’s memory chipmaker CXMT, which is making advances that could challenge industry heavyweights, rose in early Wednesday trading in Asia, but then fell back. In South Korea, Samsung Electronics Co. stocks also initially rose but fell flat. SK Hynix slipped.
All told, the S&P 500 edged down by 1.79 points to 7,805.45. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 180.45 to 51,670.10, and the Nasdaq composite fell 41.52 to 27,204.38.
In the bond market, Treasury yields eased after oil prices fell. The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 5.21% from 5.24% late Friday. Trading in the U.S. bond market was closed Monday for a holiday.
Yields sank following a 0.9% dip for the price of a barrel of Brent crude oil to $105.69. Oil prices have been yo-yoing because of uncertainty about when conflicts in the Middle East will allow the global energy industry to return to normal.
In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude rose 0.21% to $94.34 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, edged up 0.15% to $105.85 a barrel.
In currency trading, the U.S. dollar inched down to 158.25 Japanese yen from 158.32 yen. The euro cost $1.1212, up from $1.1203.
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AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed to this report.
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Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@yurikageyama
