World stocks fall in semiconductor rout; oil rises on Middle East escalation

By Sinéad Carew and Samuel Indyk

NEW YORK/LONDON, July 17 (Reuters) - Share indexes tumbled astir the satellite connected Friday, arsenic heavyweight spot stocks plunged for a 3rd consecutive time arsenic investors reduced bets connected artificial intelligence, with China's Moonshot releasing a ample AI system.

Meanwhile ‌oil prices roseate arsenic the United States and Iran expanded their attacks to deed cardinal infrastructure. The United States struck bridges and an ‌airport successful Iran, and Tehran responded by hitting a powerfulness and desalination works successful Kuwait.

In the contested Strait of Hormuz, wherever the renewed struggle has again chopped disconnected planetary vigor supplies, ​U.S. Marines boarded a tanker, and different vessel was reported to person been deed by a projectile.

In its 3rd consecutive time of losses, the Philadelphia semiconductor scale dipped to a level 23.5% beneath its astir caller grounds closing high, reached connected June 22. It was past down much than 2% connected the day.

While investors were shying distant owed to worries astir affluent tech valuations and the sustainability of AI superior spending growth, Mona Mahajan, caput of concern strategy and plus allocation astatine ‌Edward Jones, noted that vigor stocks were rallying with ⁠oil prices.

Defensive assets specified arsenic authorities bonds were besides successful demand, on with safer equity sectors specified arsenic utilities.

"We're seeing a spot of a antiaircraft commercialized instrumentality clasp this greeting ... and astatine bottommost of the database of assemblage show is ⁠the AI exertion portion of the market," said Mahajan.

She said the assemblage had already risen "in a parabolic fashion, and we cognize those types of trades thin to not past indefinitely".

She besides pointed to the unveiling by Chinese AI startup Moonshot of Kimi K3, which it said was the world's largest open-weight AI system, delivering show adjacent to ​U.S. ​giant Anthropic's frontier model.

On Wall Street astatine 11:02 a.m. (1502 GMT) the Dow Jones Industrial Average was ​down 100.93 points, oregon 0.19%, astatine 52,452.04, the S&P 500 ‌was down 64.07 points, oregon 0.85%, astatine 7,469.70 and the Nasdaq Composite was down 418.14 points, oregon 1.62%, astatine 25,463.81.

MSCI's gauge of stocks astir the globe fell 12.52 points, oregon 1.12%, to 1,109.17.

The pan-European STOXX 600 scale fell 0.61%.

Losses were much terrible successful Asia, with MSCI's broadest scale of Asia-Pacific shares excluding Japan finishing down 2.7%, portion Japan's Nikkei tumbled 4%, putting it 12% beneath its caller peak.

Taiwan's banal marketplace plunged much than 6% for its worst time since a selloff successful April 2025 related to U.S. President Donald Trump's import tariffs.