Asian shares were mostly lower on Monday as investors unloaded more stocks linked to the escalating conflict between the U.S. and Iran. South Korea's Kospi fell 4.5% as the U.S. announced more attacks for a ninth straight night.
Asian shares were mostly lower on Monday as investors unloaded more stocks linked to the escalating conflict between the U.S. and Iran. South Korea's Kospi fell 4.5% as the U.S. announced more attacks for a ninth straight night.
Iran has been responding to U.S. strikes by hitting U.S.-allies across the Middle East. The international standard Brent crude rose 3.2% to $90.95 per barrel and benchmark U.S. crude climbed 2.8% to $84.04 per barrel. The U.S. and Iran continue to exchange strikes, which are proving to be deadly for both sides, according to ING commodities strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey.
If this escalation goes unchecked, we could return to an environment of wide-scale attacks across the Persian Gulf, they noted. The Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for global oil transport, have nearly ground to a halt, adding to pressures on supplies. Two of South Korea's most valuable stocks, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, booked losses. Samsung Electronics lost 4.7%, while memory chip maker SK Hynix fell 4.5%.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., or TSMC, climbed 1.3% after the company announced it plans to spend an additional $100 billion to expand its chipmaking capacity in the U.S. Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 1.7% to 24,984.24, while the Shanghai Composite index edged 0.1% lower, to 3,761.40. AI-related shares including chipmaking stocks declined on Friday, pulling world markets lower.
Pledges of huge spending on AI are fueling concerns that the sector may be in a bubble, and many investors have opted to sell to lock in profits from recent big gains. The return to war in the Strait of Hormuz may start to weigh more heavily on financial markets before too long, especially if even strong tech earnings reports continue to be met with scepticism, according to Jonas Goltermann, chief markets economist at Capital Economics.
The recent downturn in the market was triggered by the news of the U.S. and Iran's conflict, which rattled world markets in early 2025. It was viewed as another sign of how lower-cost, capable Chinese AI models are increasingly challenging rivals like Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's GPT. On Wall Street, the benchmark S&P 500 ended the week down 1% at 7,457.69. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.8% to 52,146.42, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite lost 1.4% to 25,520.24.
Elon Musk's rocket company, SpaceX, dropped 5.4% after dropping below its initial public offering price of $135 a share, reaching its lowest point sinc
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