Shares were mostly lower Monday in Asia and oil prices fell after rising last week to their highest level in more than four years.
U.S. futures edged higher.
Analysts said investors were bracing for earnings reports of big companies and central bank decisions this week that could shake markets.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 slipped 0.1% to 62,602.86 and the Kospi in Seoul dropped 1.1% to 5,494.29.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng edged 0.2% higher to 23,137.93, while the Shanghai Composite index lost 0.4% to 3,673.83.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.2% to 8,782.30.
The price of Brent crude, the international standard, fell 1.3% to $110.23 a barrel. U.S. benchmark crude sank 1.7% to $101.52 a barrel.
On Friday, the price for a barrel of Brent crude rose 3.1% to settle at $116.72, its highest level since June 2022. It has surged from less than $97 since early October.
Also Friday, the S&P 500 fell 0.5%, adding to its decline from a day before and logging its second-straight weekly loss. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.2%, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.2% after giving up a modest gain.
Several AI-related companies rallied, helping ease some of the impact from the broader market slide. Micron Technology rose 2.5%, Intel gained 1.7%, Microsoft added 0.7%, and Advanced Micro Devices closed 1.7% higher.
Stocks that have benefited from the frenzy over AI have been buffeted by waves of selling as investors fret over whether their high prices are justified. Many of those companies have been borrowing to fund investments in AI technology and high interest rates are making those loans more expensive.
Market players are closely watching corporate earnings, looking for a better sense of whether those investments are likely to pay off. Several influential AI-related companies report their latest financial results this week, including Google’s parent, Alphabet, along with Microsoft and Amazon.
“This week is less about broad conviction and more about proof. Big Tech now has to show that the spending binge still deserves the market’s faith,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.
“Investors want proof now. They want to know whether the billions going into the compute buildout are building a durable earnings machine or just a shinier version of the same old capex furnace,” he said.
Industrial companies had some of the biggest losses. Caterpillar fell 2.4%.
American Express slumped 3.7%, one of several financial stocks that lost ground, despite reporting profits for its most recent quarter that beat analysts’ forecasts. The company did announce its first major job cuts in roughly a decade.
Treasury yields in the U.S. edged higher following sharp drops on Thursday.
Yields have been rising globally, partly over worries about governments taking on too much debt. Inflation also remains a concern and is stubbornly well above 3% in the U.S. That prompted the Federal Reserve to raise its benchmark interest rate at its last meeting in an effort to cool inflation.
Wall Street expects the central bank to hold rates steady at its meeting this week, but is leaning heavily toward another rate hike in December.
This week also will bring several big economic updates, including the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation. The personal consumption expenditures index, or PCE, is expected to show that inflation rose at a 3.7% rate in September, sharply above the Fed’s 2% target.
The U.S. war with Iran has severely cut the world’s oil supply, driving energy prices higher and fueling a sharp jump in the cost of everything from gasoline to food and clothes.
In other dealings early Monday, the dollar slipped to 156.79 Japanese yen from 156.99 yen. The euro was unchanged at $1.1223.
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