World Shares Mixed Monday              07/20 05:27

   World shares were mixed on Monday and South Korea's Kospi fell 4.5% as 
investors unloaded more stocks linked to artificial intelligence.

   HONG KONG (AP) -- World shares were mixed on Monday and South Korea's Kospi 
fell 4.5% as investors unloaded more stocks linked to artificial intelligence.

   U.S. futures edged higher.

   In early European trading, Britain's FTSE 100 fell 0.4% to 10,561.22. 
France's CAC 40 was up 0.3% to 8,362.37, and Germany's DAX added 0.3% to 
24,905.61.

   Oil prices stabilized after rising earlier in the day as the U.S. and Iran 
moved closer to resuming an all-out war. Early Monday, the U.S. announced more 
attacks for a ninth straight night. Iran has been responding to U.S. strikes by 
hitting U.S. allies across the Middle East.

   Brent crude, the international standard, fell 0.4% to $87.77 per barrel but 
still remained much higher than prewar levels. Benchmark U.S. crude dropped 
0.8% to $81.13 per barrel.

   "The U.S. and Iran continue to exchange strikes, which are proving to be 
deadly for both sides," ING commodities strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa 
Manthey wrote in a commentary Monday. "If this escalation goes unchecked, we 
could return to an environment of wide-scale attacks across the Persian Gulf."

   Tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for global oil 
transport, have nearly ground to a halt, adding to pressures on supplies, they 
noted. On Monday, U.S. gas prices again surged to an average of $4 a gallon.

   In Asia, Japan's markets were closed Monday for a holiday. South Korea's 
Kospi, which has benefited substantially from the global AI frenzy, sank 4.5% 
to 6,516.27. Two of its most valuable stocks booked losses. Samsung Electronics 
lost 4.3%, while memory chipmaker SK Hynix fell 4.2%.

   Taiwan's Taiex, also heavy in AI-related stocks, was 0.5% lower as its 
leading chipmaker, TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., climbed 
1.3%. It had fallen 7.3% on Friday after the company announced it plans to 
spend an additional $100 billion to expand its chipmaking capacity in the U.S.

   Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 2.4% to 25,143.05, while the Shanghai Composite 
index traded 0.9% higher at 3,796.28.

   Australia's S&P/ASX 200 fell less than 0.1% to 8,791.30. India's Sensex 
slipped 0.6%.

   AI-related shares including chipmaking stocks declined on Friday, pulling 
world markets lower. Pledges of huge spending on AI are fueling worries the 
sector may be in a bubble, and many investors have opted to sell to lock in 
profits from recent big gains.

   "The return to war in the Strait of Hormuz may start to weigh more heavily 
on financial markets before too long, especially if even strong tech earnings 
reports continue to be met with skepticism," Jonas Goltermann, chief markets 
economist at Capital Economics wrote in a note Monday.

   Markets were also shaken by the rollout of another powerful Chinese AI 
model, this time by Beijing-based Moonshot AI.

   The impact of the new Kimi K3 open-source AI model was similar to when 
China's " DeepSeek moment" rattled world markets in early 2025. It was viewed 
as another sign of how lower-cost, capable Chinese AI models are increasingly 
challenging rivals like Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's GPT.

   On Wall Street, the benchmark S&P 500 ended the week down 1% at 7,457.69. 
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.8% to 52,146.42, while the 
technology-heavy Nasdaq composite lost 1.4% to 25,520.24.

   Chipmaking stocks took a hit, with Nvidia falling 2.2%, while Broadcom and 
AMD, or Advanced Micro Devices, fell 1%.

   SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket company, dropped 5.4% after dropping below its 
initial public offering price of $135 a share, reaching its lowest point since 
its stock began public trading on the Nasdaq last month.

   In other dealings, the U.S. dollar was mostly unchanged at 162.43 Japanese 
yen. The euro was trading at $1.1430, down from $1.1438.