Tech and AI Selloff Deepens as a Stronger Dollar Pressures Gold, Silver and Bitcoin

A worldwide selloff in technology and artificial-intelligence shares continued into Friday, with the heaviest losses concentrated in the chipmakers and platforms that had recorded the largest gains over the past year. South Korea's KOSPI (Korea Composite Stock Price Index) fell about 5.8 percent on Thursday, following a drop of roughly 10 percent on Tuesday that tripped a circuit breaker and forced a 20-minute halt, as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix each fell more than 12 percent. The decline spread across Asia and Europe, with Japan's Nikkei 225 down 3.6 percent and SoftBank falling 15 percent, the Nasdaq Composite down 2.21 percent and the pan-European Stoxx 600 lower by about 1 percent.

Israeli trading followed the global pattern. The Tel Aviv 35 index fell more than 2.5 percent and has dropped over 10 percent from its recent peak, what local market data described as the sharpest declines since October 2023. Investors attributed the selling to growing concern over the cost of building out AI infrastructure and to a reassessment of how highly the sector had been valued.

Precious metals and the assets that track them did not protect investors this time. Silver fell below 57 dollars an ounce, its weakest level since November, as a firmer dollar and rising expectations of Federal Reserve rate increases pushed metals lower. Gold held near 4,036 dollars an ounce, little changed on the day according to market data. Bitcoin traded around 59,400 dollars, down from about 62,651 dollars two days earlier, after breaching the 62,000-dollar level earlier in June.

Currency markets reflected the same dollar strength. A Russian financial channel reported the dollar approaching 79 rubles, although official and market quotes placed the pair closer to 76. The shared driver is a market repricing the path of US policy under a Federal Reserve more inclined to raise rates, a shift that strengthens the dollar, raises the opportunity cost of holding assets that pay no yield, and exposes the leverage built up during the long expansion of cheap credit.