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

A worldwide selloff in technology and artificial-intelligence shares deepened on Friday, when South Korea's KOSPI (Korea Composite Stock Price Index) plunged more than 8 percent in intraday trading and triggered its second circuit breaker of the week, forcing a 20-minute trading halt, as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix each fell more than 9 percent. The losses extended a week of sharp declines. The KOSPI had dropped about 5.8 percent the previous session and roughly 10 percent on Tuesday, when an earlier circuit breaker forced a 20-minute halt. The selling 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.

The immediate catalyst was Apple, which on Thursday raised prices across its Macs, iPads and other devices by 100 to 300 dollars on its most popular models to offset a shortage of memory chips driven by demand from AI data centers. Apple shares fell about 6 percent, the company's worst single-day decline in more than a year, sharpening concern that the cost of the AI buildout is now reaching consumers.

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 fell below 60,000 dollars, trading around 59,750, down from about 62,651 dollars earlier in the week, after breaching the 62,000-dollar level earlier in June and as crypto fell alongside the tech shares.

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.