# Oil prices slip and Asian shares are mostly lower as investors sell chipmaker stocks > Source: > Published: 2026-07-30 05:13:35+00:00 HONG KONG (AP) — Oil prices fell Wednesday and Asian shares were mostly trading lower as South Korea's Kospi extended its losses after falling more than 16% over the past two days. Crude prices remain volatile after the U.S. said early Thursday it had conducted a "heavy wave" of [strikes against Iran](https://apnews.com/article/iran-war-trump-saudi-arabia-israel-cbb2c3f49f3072c542fc6395468b64b5), responding to an attack on a U.S. base. U.S. futures edged higher [after losses on Wall Street](https://apnews.com/article/stocks-markets-ai-oil-trump-rates-b8bfaf782877957bbaa7196b70a4d725). In South Korea, recent drops in its benchmark Kospi, a big beneficiary of the [global boom in artificial intelligence](https://apnews.com/hub/artificial-intelligence), have been seen by some analysts as a reflection of broader doubts about [massive investments](https://apnews.com/article/ai-inflation-federal-reserve-434f02e62a02f9b92e57995d9375df57) by technology giants in expanding capacity for AI. The Kospi was swinging on Thursday and was down 1.3% to 5,587.82, after falling 10.8% on Tuesday and nearly 6% on Wednesday. The benchmark has fallen more than 35% from its all-time high of more than 9,000 in June, though it's still up roughly 30% so far this year. Samsung Electronics gained 2.4%, after the South Korean technology giant [reported a record operating profit](https://apnews.com/article/samsung-ai-profit-memory-chips-10c2c548a392988862d8c7bd3f6fae05) for the latest quarter, largely in line with estimates. Chipmaker SK Hynix lost 4% after sinking more than 9% on Wednesday, when it also reported a record quarterly operating profit, which ballooned nearly sixfold. That was still lower than what analysts had expected and disappointed investors dumped its shares. In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 gained 0.6% to 61,778.02. Open-AI investor SoftBank Group fell 2.7%. But computer chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron climbed 4.4%. Memory chipmaker Kioxia Holdings added 7.5%. Taiwan's Taiex, which was also lifted by the AI boom, advanced 0.8%. Its leading chipmaker TSMC was trading 1.8% higher. Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell less than 0.1% to 25,779.70. The Shanghai Composite index lost 1.2% to 3,784.55. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.9% to 8,959.90. India's Sensex was less than 0.1% higher. Oil prices fell on Thursday even as the U.S. and Iran resumed exchanging attacks. U.S. President Donald Trump said the U.S. would hit Iran "very hard," after it targeted a U.S. base in Jordan. Maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for oil transport, remains limited, putting pressure on global supplies. Brent crude, the international standard, lost 1% to $87.18 per barrel after rising sharply a day earlier. It was trading around $72 a barrel in late February, before the war began. Benchmark U.S. crude declined 0.9% to $83.74 per barrel. In the U.S. on Wednesday, the benchmark S&P 500 dropped 1.5% to 7,316.15. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2.2% to 51.594.14, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite lost 1.7% to 24,442.94.