TOKYO – The Asian markets showed a varied performance in the quiet Lunar New Year trading on Tuesday following a decline in the tech giants on Wall Street, triggered by skepticism raised by a Chinese competitor regarding the recent artificial-intelligence market frenzy.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 in Japan slipped by 0.9% to 39,214.19. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 remained almost unchanged, edging up by less than 0.1% to 8,411.70. On the other hand, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng increased by 0.2% to 20,236.13. Markets in South Korea, Shanghai, and other parts of the region were closed for the holidays.
In Japan, the tech sector witnessed mixed movements with SoftBank Group Corp. experiencing a significant 10% decline in its stock. Hitachi Ltd. also suffered a 4% drop, while Fujitsu and Sony Corp. managed to recover losses. The computer chip maker Tokyo Electron saw a decline of 7.6%.
Fuji Media Holdings, rocked by a sex scandal, rose nearly 9% in morning trading after a marathon news conference overnight by its top executives that lasted more than 10 hours. Fuji’s stock price has zigzagged in recent months amid Japanese magazine reports about “a problem” involving an anchorwoman and a Japanese male star. He has subsequently announced his retirement.
On Monday, the S&P 500 dropped 1.5% to 6,012.28, dragged down in large part by a 16.9% fall for Nvidia. Other Big Tech stocks also took heavy losses, pulling the Nasdaq composite down 3.1% to 19,341.83 for its worst loss in more than a month.
The damage was focused on AI-related stocks, while the rest of the market held up much better. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.7% to 44,713.58, and the majority of U.S. stocks climbed. But anyone holding an S&P 500 index fund, which are found in many 401(k) accounts, felt the pain because of how influential those tech giants have become on indexes.
The shock to financial markets came from China, where an AI company called DeepSeek unveiled a large language model that can compete with U.S. giants but at potentially a fraction of the cost. DeepSeek had already hit the top of the chart for free apps on Apple’s App Store by Monday morning, and analysts said such a feat was particularly impressive given how the U.S. government has restricted Chinese access to top AI chips.
It’s unclear, however, how much DeepSeek’s announcement will ultimately shake the economy that’s built around the AI industry, from the chip makers making semiconductors to the utilities hoping to electrify vast data centers gobbling up computing power.
“It remains to be seen if DeepSeek found a way to work around these chip restrictions rules and what chips they ultimately used as there will be many skeptics around this issue given the information is coming from China,” according to Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities.
DeepSeek’s disruption nevertheless rocked AI-related stocks worldwide.
It’s a sharp turnaround for the AI winners, which had soared in recent years on hopes that all the investment pouring in would remake the global economy and deliver gargantuan profits along the way. Such stellar performances also raised criticism that their stock prices had gone too far, too fast.
Before Monday’s drop, which was its worst since the 2020 COVID crash, Nvidia’s stock had soared from less than $20 to more than $140 in less than two years, for example.
A small group of seven such companies has become so dominant that they alone accounted for more than half the S&P 500’s total return last year, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. They include Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla.
Their immense sizes give them huge sway over the S&P 500 and other indexes that give more weight to bigger companies.
Markets are also awaiting earnings reports later this week from Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft and Tesla.
In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude lost 5 cents to $73.12 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, shed 1 cent to $76.17 a barrel.
In currency trading, the U.S. dollar rose to 155.54 Japanese yen from 154.51 yen. The euro cost $1.0434, down from $1.0493.
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AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed.
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