Asia shares were mixed on Wednesday following Wall Street losses weighed down by technology stocks, while gold and silver continued to regain ground after a recent sell-off.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 dropped 0.6% to 54,391.58, although it was still trading higher than at the start of the week. Shares of chipmaker Tokyo Electron fell 2%, while testing equipment maker Advantest lost 1.6%. SoftBank Group edged up 0.2%.
Shares of Nintendo plunged more than 10%, even as the Japanese video-game maker posted strong profits on Tuesday, as investors and analysts expressed concern about whether sales momentum can be maintained for the Switch 2 game console that was rolled out last year.
South Korea’s Kospi was up 0.8% to 5,331.02 despite weakness in some technology-related stocks. Samsung Electronics fell 0.2%, and chipmaker SK Hynix was down 1.4%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.8% to 26,629.81. The Shanghai Composite index was flat at 4,067.39.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 traded 0.7% higher to 8,917.40.
Taiwan’s Taiex was up 0.2%.
Gold and silver prices gained on Wednesday, as investors continued to look for safe haven assets over concerns from heightened geopolitical tensions, a weaker U.S. dollar to tariff uncertainties.
Gold’s price rose 2.8% to $5,070.30 per ounce, while the price of silver jumped 4.8% to $87.29 an ounce. The precious metals’ extended gains come after a recent sell-off. Gold’s price fell to less than $4,500 on Monday, from close to $5,600 last week. Silver sank more than 31% on Friday.
“After plunging from record highs amid elevated volatility, precious metals attracted renewed buying interest,” wrote ING Bank analysts Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey in a note.
“For gold, the recent correction does not point to a shift in the underlying macro narrative,” they said. Safe haven demand is among factors that will remain supportive of gold prices over the medium term, they added.
On Tuesday, the U.S. stock market sank on losses in Big Tech stocks. The S&P 500 dropped 0.8%, or 58.63, to 6,917.81. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.3%, or 166.67, to 49,240.99. The Nasdaq composite was down 1.4%, or 336.92, to 23,255.19.
Nvidia, one of the world’s most valuable companies, fell 2.8%. Shares of Microsoft fell 2.9%. That’s in part due to investors rotating out of technology-related stocks on concerns over whether their shares were being overvalued, as well as if their heavy spending on artificial intelligence investments will pay off.
PayPal sank 20.3% following weaker-than-expected results for the latest quarter. Pfizer dipped 3.3%, despite stronger-than-expected quarterly profit results.
In the bond market, the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury was at 4.27% on Wednesday, down from 4.29% late Monday. Bond yields drop when bond prices rise, as the two are inversely related, reflecting stronger investor appetite.
In other dealings early Wednesday, U.S. benchmark crude oil gained 0.6% to $63.60 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 0.5% to $67.66 per barrel. Oil prices were trading firmer partly due to tensions resurfacing between the U.S. and Iran, after a U.S. Navy fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone flying close to a U.S. aircraft carrier, analysts at ING Bank said.
The U.S. dollar rose to 156.25 Japanese yen from 155.72 yen. The euro was trading at $1.1824, up from $1.1819.
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AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed.
