Investing.com — Asian stocks rebounded on Friday as investors bought beaten-down technology shares following a sharp selloff driven by concerns over debt financing for the artificial intelligence boom and intensifying competition from China.
South Korea’s KOSPI climbed 3.3%, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 advanced 1.7%, recovering some of Thursday’s steep losses as semiconductor stocks regained ground.
The MSCI Asia Pacific index rose 1.1%. The rebound followed Thursday’s nearly 8% plunge in the KOSPI, which took the index to its lowest close since late-July and triggered a circuit breaker amid heavy selling in memory-chip makers.
Indonesia’s stocks bucked the regional recovery, with the Jakarta Composite plunging more than 11% in its steepest one-day decline since January 1998, after MSCI proposed reclassifying the country from emerging-market to standalone-market status.
In U.S. futures, Nasdaq 100 futures and S&P 500 futures were little changed, pointing to a more cautious start after Wall Street’s cash indexes posted modest gains on Thursday.
Chipmakers rebound, but AI financing concerns persist
South Korean memory-chip makers led the recovery, with Samsung Electronics rising 2.9% and SK Hynix gaining 2.22%. Japan’s Kioxia advanced 3.3%, while Sony rose 2.9%. Taiwan’s Largan fell 5.7% and Foxconn rose 1.3%.
The rebound followed a technology selloff intensified by concerns about the financial risks underpinning the AI investment boom, particularly the debt burden of cloud-computing company CoreWeave.
Its shares recovered some ground on Thursday after extending Wednesday’s 15.5% slump early in the session, when reports that its bond yields had reached distressed-debt levels helped fuel a broader global selloff in AI-linked stocks.
The selloff also reflected worries over Chinese competition after ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) reported progress on a next-generation DRAM architecture that could intensify competition with established manufacturers such as SK Hynix and Samsung. CXMT shares rebounded nearly 5% on Friday.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 1.2%, China’s CSI 300 rose 0.9% and the Shanghai Composite added 1.1%. Taiwan’s benchmark index advanced 0.7%, although shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TW:2330) edged down 0.4% despite the chipmaker reporting record quarterly profits and issuing an upbeat revenue outlook.
