European shares are mostly lower after a retreat in Asia that brought sharp declines in Japan and South Korea following a sell-off of technology stocks on Wall Street.
Oil prices wavered after the U.S. military launched attacks against Iran following the crash of an Army helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz that President Donald Trump blamed on Tehran.
The latest flaring of fighting again dimmed hopes for progress toward a permanent end to the war, which has lasted more than three months and roiled markets already wavering from spates of heavy selling of stocks in companies linked to the boom in artificial intelligence.
With prospects for fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz in doubt, oil prices resumed their climb after rising and then falling earlier in the day.
Brent crude, the international standard, gained 0.4% to $91.78 per barrel. It was trading at approximately $70 a barrel before the war began in late February.
Benchmark U.S. crude was 0.1% higher at $88.31 per barrel.
“The situation remains highly volatile,” ING commodities strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote in a Wednesday note. “This once again demonstrates the difficulty Iran and the U.S. face in working toward a sustainable ceasefire that allows for the free flow of vessels through the Strait of Hormuz.”
They noted that demand tends to be strong in the early summer, adding to upward pressure on prices.
The future for the S&P 500 declined 0.6% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 0.5% lower.
Britain’s FTSE 100 edged 0.1% lower to 10.223.39. Germany’s DAX shed 0.3% to 24.368.28. while France’s CAC 40 rose less than 0.1% to 8.210.03.
South Korea’s Kospi gave up 4.5%, to 7.730.82. after surging the day before. Samsung Electronics, which makes memory and logic chips and is the country’s most valuable company, sank 6.1%. Shares of chipmaker SK Hynix tumbled 7.5%.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 dropped 1.9% to 64.179.27. after data showed Japan’s producer price index, a measure for prices at the wholesale level, rose 6.3% in May from a year before. That’s the fastest pace in more than three years.
Shares of technology and telecommunications giant SoftBank Group, which has a strong AI focus, lost 8.3%. Chip equipment maker Advantest lost 4.2%, but Tokyo Electron advanced 3.2%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.6% to 24.407.96. while the Shanghai Composite index slipped 0.4% to 3.993.23. Official data released Wednesday showed that China’s producer prices rose to nearly a four-year high of 3.9% in May compared with a year earlier.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 traded 0.6% higher to 8.653.30.
Taiwan’s Taiex was 3.3% lower, while India’s Sensex climbed 0.8%.
On Tuesday, Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 fell 0.3% to 7.386.65. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.2% to 50.872.11. and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite dropped 1% to 25.678.82.
U.S. chipmaker Micron Technology went from an early 4% gain to a 10% drop before closing 1.4% lower. Shares of Marvell Technology sank 7.6%, and AMD sank 3%.
Investors are also monitoring updates on U.S. inflation that are set for this week as the Iran war is driving up global energy prices.
In other dealings early Wednesday, the U.S. dollar rose to 160.40 Japanese yen from 160.36 yen. The euro was trading at $1.1552. up from $1.1543.
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