Seoul Gazette - Oil surges on Mideast war escalation, tech stocks rebound

The world's main crude contracts, Brent North Sea and West Texas Intermediate, both gained more than five percent in Asian trading hours and again neared $100 a barrel before easing.

The Israeli-Iran strikes were the first against one another since a shaky ceasefire put five weeks of war on hold, sparking fears the escalation could spark a new full-scale Middle East conflict.

In Asia, technology stocks slumped following heavy pre-weekend losses on Wall Street.

Seoul's Kospi index dived more than eight percent to lead a rout across the region after Friday's strong US jobs data fuelled bets on a Federal Reserve interest rate hike, hammering the technology industry.

Shares in the chipmaker Samsung dived more than 10 percent and its rival SK hynix shed 7.7 percent.

Tokyo's stock market lost almost four percent Monday and Hong Kong closed down 1.2 percent.

Wall Street had tumbled Friday, led by a four-percent drop for the tech-heavy Nasdaq.

"Rising borrowing costs reduce the present value of future earnings and can also weigh on investment spending," noted Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at trading group Swissquote.

"Both tend to hurt technology stocks more than other sectors because a larger share of their valuation depends on future growth," she said.

She added that "the bloodbath across tech is not only due to strong jobs data", noting "that investors who rode the chip wave would be tempted to take their profits and free up cash to jump on the SpaceX IPO" this week.

The rockets-to-AI behemoth led by Elon Musk aims to raise $75 billion in the biggest initial public offering ever, as the world's richest person pursues data centres in space and a trip to Mars.

But a recovery in US tech stocks helped Wall Street open with gains, with the Nasdaq Composite climbing 1.4 percent as trading got underway.

"This is a buy-the-dip trade," said Briefing.com analyst Patrick O'Hare.

"Some of this is purely reflexive, with traders betting Friday's sell-off was nothing more than an overdue drawdown for an extremely overbought market," he said.

Europe's main markets were mostly lower in afternoon trading.

Elsewhere, bitcoin hovered around $63,700 after sinking below $60,000 on Friday to its lowest level since October 2024.

Following Donald Trump's presidential election win in November of that year, the world's biggest cryptocurrency had soared to record highs thanks to his vocal support for the sector.

- Key figures at around 1330 GMT -

Brent North Sea Crude: UP 1.7 percent at $94.59 a barrel

West Texas Intermediate: UP 1.4 percent at $91.81 a barrel

New York - DOW: UP 0.4 percent at 51,055.83 points

New York - S&P 500: UP 0.9 percent at 7,448.76

New York - Nasdaq Composite: UP 1.4 percent at 26,061.19

London - FTSE 100: FLAT at 10,368.25

Paris - CAC 40: DOWN 0.2 percent at 8,200.12

Frankfurt - DAX: DOWN 0.4 percent at 24,671.62

Seoul - Kospi: DOWN 8.3 percent at 7,484.41 (close)

Tokyo - Nikkei 225: DOWN 3.9 percent at 64,024.60 (close)

Hong Kong - Hang Seng Index: DOWN 1.2 percent at 24,657.06 (close)

Shanghai - Composite: DOWN 1.7 percent at 3,959.34 (close)

Euro/dollar: UP at $1.1553 from $1.1520 on Friday

Pound/dollar: UP at $1.3361 from $1.3333

Dollar/yen: DOWN at 159.96 yen from 160.23 yen

Euro/pound: UP at 86.47 pence from 86.41 pence

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A.Uhm--SG