World shares are mixed and Kospi falls 4.6% after tech giants decline on
Wall Street
[August 06, 2026] By
ELAINE KURTENBACH
BANGKOK (AP) — Shares were mixed Thursday in Europe and Asia and South
Korea’s Kospi dropped more than 4% following declines for some Big Tech
giants including memory chipmaker SK Hynix.
Oil prices held steady, with Brent crude trading near $79 a barrel.
Uncertainty about the direction of the U.S. war with Iran is still
overhanging markets despite hopes for a reopening of the Strait of
Hormuz.
The future for the S&P 500 was up 0.1% while that for the Dow Jones
Industrial Average gained 0.2%.
Markets will get an update Friday on U.S. jobs with the monthly
employment report for July, and analysts say investors appear to be
bracing for its potential impact.
“Asia's chip selloff looks like a combination of profit-taking and risk
reduction ahead of Friday's nonfarm payroll report,” Stephen Innes of
SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.
Strong corporate profits and expectations for more growth ahead
generally have been steering U.S. stocks higher. But Asian benchmarks
have been hit by bouts of selling of computer chipmakers and other
companies related to the boom in artificial intelligence.
SK Hynix plunged 10.4% after dropping 30% ahead of the open in Seoul,
while its larger rival Samsung Electronics lost 6.3% in the latest rout
for shares linked to the AI boom.
The Kospi lost 4.6% to 6,296.38.
In early European trading, Germany's DAX was unchanged at 26,126.08,
while the CAC 40 in Paris surged 0.7% to 8,730.85. Britain's FTSE 100
edged 0.2% higher, to 10,913.07.
Japan's Nikkei 225 lost 0.9% to 65,683.26.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng declined 1.7% to 25,470.93, while the
Shanghai Composite index climbed 0.6% to 3,900.35.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.5% to 9,271.60.
U.S. President Donald Trump said a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz
was coming soon. But there have been many stops and starts during the
five-month-old conflict that has stifled the global supply of oil and
rattled energy markets.
The price of Brent crude, the international standard, rose 0.3% to
$79.70 a barrel. Oil prices have been swinging for months and were as
high as $102 per barrel at one point during the conflict, jolting
already stubbornly high inflation. Higher oil prices pushed gasoline
prices higher and increased shipping costs for a wide range of products.
U.S. benchmark crude oil was unchanged at $75.21 a barrel.
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A person walks past an electronic board showing Japan's Nikkei index
at a securities firm Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP
Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
 On Wednesday, the S&P 500 slipped
0.2% from an all-time high to close at 7,723.55. The Dow industrials
rose 0.5% to 54,349.12. The Nasdaq composite lost 0.8% to 26,363.44.
Among big technology companies losing ground,
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, fell 4% and Microsoft lost 1.1%.
Overall, the market has been rising as companies head into the
closing stretch of their latest round of earnings reports with sharp
overall gains. Three-quarters of the companies within the S&P 500
have reported results so far, and Wall Street expects profit growth
of 50% when they are all finished.
The Walt Disney Co. rose 3.6% after easily beating Wall Street’s
profit forecasts, helped by a $1 billion box office haul from “Toy
Story 5” and theme park revenue.
Booking Holdings jumped 6.6% after reporting that strong travel
demand drove profit and revenue growth during its most recent
quarter.
Elon Musk's SpaceX fell 13.6% following the release late Tuesday of
its first quarterly report as a public company, which showed that it
sharply boosted spending on artificial intelligence. The company did
help give semiconductor giant Nvidia a 3.4% boost after announcing
it would exclusively use that company’s chips for its artificial
intelligence technology.
Musk had said earlier he would use chips from both Nvidia and
Advanced Micro Devices for SpaceX and his electric vehicle company,
Tesla.
Inflation concerns have been hanging over markets and the Federal
Reserve. The central bank has been holding its key benchmark rate
steady as it monitors the costs and the impact on the economy.
In other dealings early Thursday, the dollar rose to 157.85 Japanese
yen from 157.77 yen. The euro fell to $1.1549 from $1.1555.
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Associated Press writer Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea,
contributed to this report.
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