Asia’s major markets opened Friday in negative territory but managed to reverse most of their losses by the close of trading, as the technology sector selloff showed signs of cooling — even as investors continued to seek refuge in sovereign debt markets.
The MSCI Asia Pacific index, the benchmark for Asian equities, was last down 0.07%, having fallen more than 1% in early trade. South Korea’s Kospi, widely regarded as a bellwether for Artificial Intelligence (AI) sentiment, plunged more than 4% at its session low before paring losses to just 0.06% by the close.
In Europe, a session of modest gains is anticipated, with Euro Stoxx 50 futures advancing 0.04%. In the United States, the technology-heavy Nasdaq is expected to claw back some of the ground lost on Thursday, rising 0.27% in pre-market trading after shedding 2.6% in the previous session — a move that put the index on course for a second consecutive week of losses.
“The equity market is increasingly pricing in the risk that the AI boom, or bubble, is coming to an end,” Tomoichiro Kubota, chief market analyst at Matsui Securities, told Bloomberg. “It may be that the AI bubble has begun to burst. There were already concerns about how AI companies would fund their investments, and falling share prices could make it even harder to raise capital going forward,” he added.
Investors have now turned their attention to the quarterly results of Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet, which are due to be reported next week. So far, among the companies that make up the so-called Magnificent Seven, earnings from Tesla and Meta have failed to convince investors that the vast sums of capital being deployed to fund AI development will deliver returns in the near term.
Among the main moves by market, China’s Hang Seng and Shanghai Composite gained 1.14% and 0.67% respectively, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 slipped 0.20%. Australia’s benchmark index edged up 0.02%.
Source: Diário Económico
Original article: https://www.diarioeconomico.co.mz/?p=554919
