World shares were mixed on Friday while oil prices hovered at their highest levels since May on worries about the war with Iran.
Brent crude, the international standard, gained 0.8% to $114.02 per barrel. U.S. benchmark crude oil added 1.1% to $100.60 per barrel.
In early European trading, Germany's DAX lost 0.4%, while the CAC 40 in Paris shed 0.6% to 7,765.74. Britain's FTSE 100 declined 0.4% to 10,685.86.
Some Asian markets bounced back from early losses.
In Asia, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 lost 0.3% to 62,693.16, while the Kospi in South Korea recovered from an early retreat, gaining 0.3% to close at 5,550.30.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng climbed 0.7% to 23,093.37 and the Shanghai Composite index added 0.9% to 3,690.48.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 was nearly unchanged at 8,795.20.
On Thursday, the S&P 500 fell 1.2% for its worst day since July, while the Nasdaq composite tumbled 2.6%. Weakness for tech stocks was so overwhelming that it masked strength for the rest of the U.S. market, where the majority of stocks actually rose. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added less than 0.1%.
AI-related stocks have been swinging on worries that their boom may be under threat because of how expensive it’s become to borrow money to build data centers and buy more AI chips. Investors fear their prices shot too high during a yearslong frenzy, even though companies in the industry continue to report growth.
Meta Platforms, which is pushing its Muse AI agent, lost 7% after reporting stronger revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected while profits fell short. The company behind Facebook and Instagram also said it’s creating a new class of stock to raise money to pay for AI investments and other expenses.
Tesla fell 3.1% after reporting a stronger profit for the summer than analysts expected, though its revenue was weaker than forecast.
The global tide against AI stocks knocked Nvidia down 4.4%. Because the chip giant is the largest company on Wall Street by total value, movements for its stock carry more weight on the S&P 500 than any other, and it was the single strongest force pulling the index lower.
CoreWeave, which has borrowed money to buy Nvidia’s AI chips that it rents out to customers over the cloud, has been particularly shaky in recent weeks because of worries about its debt. It dropped 10.1%.
Higher oil prices also have been weighing on stocks. The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil leaped 4% on Thursday and has shot up from less than $97 at the start of the month on uncertainty about when the war with Iran will allow the global energy industry to return to normal.
Worries about big government debt loads and strained budgets are hanging over almost every developed economy. Protests across France have raised pressure on the government to increase spending, which could add further to its debt.
In the United States, such concerns, along with high inflation, signals of a still-strong U.S. economy and other factors, have pushed yields in the U.S. bond market recently to their highest levels in decades.
But U.S. yields fell sharply Thursday in a signal that investors were buying U.S. government bonds in search of something safer to own as AI stocks tumbled.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury tumbled to 4.97% from 5.13% late Wednesday and from more than 5.30% earlier this month. That’s a major move for the bond market.
Thursday’s drop in yields came even as another report suggested the U.S. economy may be doing better than economists expected. It said fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, which could signal that layoffs remain low across the country.
In other dealings early Friday, the U.S. dollar rose to 156.93 Japanese yen from 156.77 yen. The euro fell to $1.1203 from $1.1218.
