World Shares Mixed Thursday            07/02 04:50

   World shares were mixed Thursday as benchmarks in Japan and South Korea 
slumped in the latest bout of heavy selling of computer chip stocks.

   HONG KONG (AP) -- World shares were mixed Thursday as benchmarks in Japan 
and South Korea slumped in the latest bout of heavy selling of computer chip 
stocks.

   Oil prices fell after negotiators from the U.S. and Iran met separately with 
mediators from Qatar and Pakistan on Wednesday, as traders eyed developments in 
talks on achieving a permanent end to the war in Iran.

   In early European trading, Britain's FTSE 100 rose 0.5% to 10,530.26. 
France's CAC 40 advanced 0.7% to 8,393.60, while Germany's DAX climbed 0.5% to 
25,160.50.

   In Asia, South Korea's benchmark Kospi index sank 7.9% to 7,648.09. with 
chip-related shares trading lower. Memory chipmaker SK Hynix lost 14.6% and 
Samsung Electronics tumbled 9.1%.

   Tokyo's Nikkei 225 lost 2.5% to 68,733.15. Shares of chip equipment maker 
Tokyo Electron shed 7.4%.

   Taiwan's Taiex declined 0.6% as chipmaking giant TSMC, or Taiwan 
Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., fell 1.6%.

   Hong Kong's Hang Seng closed 0.8% higher at 23,055.03. Chinese electric 
vehicle maker BYD's shares rose 8.1% after it reported its sales rose for a 
second straight month. The Shanghai Composite index fell 2% to 4,028.90.

   Australia's S&P/ASX 200 edged less than 0.1% higher to 8,724.50.

   India's Sensex climbed 0.6%.

   Surging demand for artificial intelligence has pushed many AI and tech 
stocks higher in recent months, with markets in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan 
reaping big gains. So far this year, the Kospi and Nikkei 225 have gained about 
77% and 33%, respectively.

   However, concerns over a potential glut in supply given the massive 
investments made by Big Tech companies in the U.S. and elsewhere have been 
clouding investor sentiment.

   On Wednesday, chip stocks in the U.S. mostly fell. Micron Technology gave up 
10.6%, Intel sank 9%, AMD, or Advanced Micro Devices, dropped 6.9%, Broadcom 
lost 2.2% and Nvidia slipped 1.3%.

   The S&P 500, Wall Street's benchmark, fell 0.2% to 7,483.23. The Dow Jones 
Industrial Average slipped less than 0.1% to 52,305.24, and the 
technology-heavy Nasdaq composite dropped 0.7% to 26,040.03.

   "AI demand may continue to grow but at a slower pace than expected," 
economists Megan Fisher and Vicky Redwood at Capital Economics wrote in a note 
on Thursday. "Firms and investors may be underestimating the barriers to AI 
adoption."

   While transformative technologies can be adopted widely, they may still fall 
short of generating financial returns soon enough in order to justify the 
massive scale of investments made by many firms, the economists said.

   Oil prices fell early Thursday, trading at levels below where they were 
before the Iran war began in late February. Hopes have risen that crude 
supplies will improve markedly with the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the 
narrow waterway that's key for the world's oil transport, even though the 
number of ships crossing the strait is still limited.

   Brent crude, the international standard, fell 0.9% to $70.93 per barrel, 
lower than the roughly $72 a barrel before the start of the war. Benchmark U.S. 
crude fell 0.8% to $68.03 per barrel.

   In other dealings, the U.S. dollar was trading at 161.10 Japanese yen, down 
from 162.58 yen, after the yen fell to a four-decade low against the dollar on 
Wednesday. The euro was trading at $1.1417, up from $1.1377.