Shares fall in Asia, with Kospi down 5.7%, while oil prices jump

Shares are sharply lower in Asia after Wall Street pulled further from its all-time high as artificial-intelligence stocks resumed their decline

BANGKOK -- Shares slipped Wednesday in Asia after Wall Street pulled further from its all-time high as artificial-intelligence stocks resumed their decline.

South Korea’s Kospi led the regional retreat, dropping 5.7% to 6,487.34. The two biggest companies benefiting from the AI boom tracked losses for their U.S. rivals. Samsung Electronics shed 7.5%, while memory chipmaker SK Hynix tumbled 8.8%.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 sank 3.2% to 65,332.04 as worries over rising bond yields coupled with selling of tech shares pulled the benchmark lower.

The yield on 10-year Japanese government bonds has been trading near a three-decade high of over 2.9% due to expectations that the Bank of Japan will soon raise its benchmark rate to counter inflation.

The Shanghai Composite index shed 2.2% to 3,903.61. Shares in humanoid robot maker Unitree soared nearly 630% initially in their trading debut on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's Nasdaq-like STAR market. The company reaped about $900 million with its initial public offering.

But shares in UBTech, another major Chinese humanoid robot maker, whose stock is traded in Hong Kong, fell 10.6%.

Taiwan's Taiex fell 1.7%, and Australia's S & P/ASX 200 slipped 0.2% to 9,053.00.

Apart from renewed jitters over criticism that AI-related stocks have shot too high, rising oil prices have been clouding market sentiment.

Crude prices have been swinging sharply due to uncertainty about when and whether the United States and Iran can reach a deal to allow oil tankers to exit the Persian Gulf freely again. Brent was going for $72.87 per barrel just before the start of the war.

Brent crude, the international standard, gained 0.6% to $91.57 per barrel. U.S. benchmark crude oil gained 0.7% to $84.66 per barrel

On Tuesday, Wall Street pulled further from its all-time high . The S & P 500 fell 0.7% for a third straight modest loss . The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 0.2%, and the Nasdaq composite sank 1.3%.

Stocks that have been big winners in the boom around AI technology led the decline. They’ve been veering up and down this summer on worries that their prices have shot too high and that the strong demand for memory, processors and other building blocks of data centers may fizzle if AI proves less profitable than promised.

Micron Technology dropped 7%, and the seller of computer memory was one of the heaviest weights on the S & P 500. So were chip companies Nvidia, which fell 2.3%, and Broadcom, which sank 3.2%.