Published on 6/26/2026
Technology-related stocks fell on Wall Street at the end of trading yesterday, Thursday, before the wave of selling extended to Asian stock exchanges on Friday, led by Japan and South Korea, with the return of concern about the cost of the artificial intelligence boom, and the ability of companies to pass on high chip prices to consumers.
In New York, the Nasdaq Composite Index closed down 120.07 points, or 0.47%, while the S&P 500 Index fell by 1.05 points, or 0.01%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average bucked the trend, rising 87.33 points, or 0.17%.
Technology stocks
Pressure on Wall Street came from shares of major technology companies, as shares of Apple, NVIDIA, Microsoft and Alphabet fell, after concerns about the rise in the cost of memory and storage chips offset the positive impact of Micron’s results and Qualcomm’s expectations regarding demand for artificial intelligence components.
Traders said Micron’s strong results were no longer read only as a sign of strong demand for artificial intelligence, but also as evidence that part of chip suppliers’ profits would come at the expense of other companies that would bear higher costs for memory and computing components.
Asian stocks
The Japanese Nikkei index closed down 4.15%, after recording in the previous session its highest closing level ever, and the broader Topix index fell 1.59% to 3,952.67 points.
SoftBank Group shares topped the Japanese market’s losses, affected by a report about the possibility of postponing the initial public offering of OpenAI until next year, which put pressure on stocks related to artificial intelligence and chips, including Advantest, Tokyo Electron, and Kioxia.
In South Korea, the KOSPI index closed down 519.09 points, or about 5.8%, and the KOSDAC index closed down 36.44 points, or about 4.1%.
The Korean market was particularly affected by semiconductor stocks, led by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, which led a strong rise in the index during the recent period with optimism about the demand for artificial intelligence chips, before the buying wave turned into widespread profit-taking.
In China, the Shanghai Composite Index fell 2.09% at the time of writing these lines, and the Shenzhen Index fell 3.30%, in an extension of the pressure on Asian stocks linked to technology and manufacturing chains.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index fell 1.93%, with a decline in risk appetite in Chinese technology companies listed on the market. The Straits Times Index in Singapore also fell 0.85%.
As for India, its two main stock exchanges did not witness trading today due to the holiday.
These moves come at a time when markets are still assessing the impact of inflation data in the United States on the path of interest rates, as US Bureau of Economic Analysis data showed that the personal consumption expenditures index rose 4.1% on an annual basis in May, compared to 3.8% in April.
High inflation increases the sensitivity of growth and technology stocks to any change in monetary policy expectations, because these stocks rely in their evaluations on relatively distant future profits, which makes them more sensitive to rising bond yields or expectations that interest rates will remain high for a longer period.
