Asian shares drop on chipmaker sell-off

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific ​shares outside Japan slipped 1%

Asian shares fell on Thursday as a sell-off in chipmakers overshadowed stellar ​earnings from industry bellwether TSMC.

Oil prices turned lower as Iran and U.S. continued to strike each other. Hostilities have been heating up in the Middle East in recent days, with Washington launching attacks on Iran and Tehran targeting U.S. bases. Brent crude futures were last 0.5% lower to $84.5 a barrel but ​were up 11% this week.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of advanced AI chips, reported a 77% ​jump in second quarter-profit to a record that was far ahead of market forecasts.

Ahead of the results, ⁠TSMC stock closed up 1.2%, but that was not enough to reverse the decline in chipmakers in Asia. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific ​shares outside Japan slipped 1% as South Korea’s plunged 6.2% on weakness from Samsung, down 6.6%, and SK Hynix, down 9%.

​Nikkei shed 3%. Hang Seng Index bucked the trend with a 1.8% gain.

Seeing aggressive pullback in Memory/Hardware, Brian Heavey, an equity trader at JPMorgan, said in a note. Don’t think there’s a smoking gun ‘negative’ headline driving semis/hardware selloff. I think just shows how high the bar is for semis earnings.

Overnight, shares ​of ASML, the world’s dominant supplier of equipment needed to make high-tech computer chips, closed 0.4% lower even after it raised its 2026 ​sales forecasts and pledged a capacity boost.

European bourses are headed for a slightly higher open, with pan-region stock futures up 0.2%. U.S. stock futures were mostly flat in Asia.