Asian Tech Stocks Roar Back as Micron Smashes Earnings — But Gold and Silver Keep Falling

London, June 25 (EBM Newsdesk Analysis) — Asian-Pacific stock indices rebounded sharply on Thursday as key technology names recovered from this week’s steep selloff. South Korea’s Kospi surged 5.4%, led by SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, which gained 13.1% and 14.3% respectively after Micron Technology’s earnings release reignited confidence across the chip sector. Japan’s Nikkei jumped 4.6%, with SoftBank up close to 8%. The Shanghai Composite added 0.3%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng underperformed, falling 1.8% as Alibaba lost nearly 5% following accusations from Anthropic that the company attempted to steal its proprietary AI capabilities.

European Markets Track the Oil Relief Rally

European indices were firmer across the board, taking their lead from US futures and the overnight Asia-Pacific rebound. With limited direct tech exposure, European markets are far more sensitive to energy prices — and the rapid pullback in crude this week has eased inflation concerns and reduced expectations of aggressive central bank tightening. The prospect that the Strait of Hormuz may soon reopen fully, without fees or tariffs, has further calmed fears of supply disruption — a relief that several Asia-Pacific economies, which had been forced into active consumption curbs, will likely feel more acutely than the UK and Europe.

The Yen Hits a New Multi-Year Low

Currency markets have settled somewhat after a turbulent week that saw the Dollar Index break decisively through 100.00 before soaring above 101.00 to a thirteen-month high. The dollar’s sharpest move came against the yen, pushing USDJPY to within a few cents of 162.00 — levels last seen in July 2024, just before Japan’s last major currency intervention. That earlier intervention proved only briefly effective; a follow-up attempt in April this year failed outright, with USDJPY recovering its losses within two months and now trading beyond that intervention’s high point, leaving the yen at its weakest in nearly two years. Japan’s Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are understood to have agreed to coordinate on currency issues if needed, but for now traders show little sign of backing down.

Sterling Steadies, But Political Uncertainty Lingers

The pound was a touch firmer this morning but remains under pressure, with GBPUSD testing support around 1.3200 as investors continue to digest the fallout from Keir Starmer’s resignation and the increasingly likely prospect of Andy Burnham succeeding him in Downing Street. Gilt markets have already delivered a cautious verdict on that transition, and the same uncertainty over who replaces Rachel Reeves at the Treasury has been weighing on sterling more broadly this week.

Micron and Qualcomm Lead a Sharp Tech Rebound

US index futures pointed firmly higher, led once again by technology, with Nasdaq futures up more than 2% after Micron’s stellar third-quarter results. As the only US-based manufacturer of high-bandwidth memory chips compatible with Nvidia’s processors, Micron’s stock surged close to 15% on better-than-expected revenue, earnings and forward guidance. Qualcomm jumped 14% on an upbeat data-centre revenue forecast, while gains rippled across the sector — AMD, Marvell, TSMC and Intel all rose sharply, helping to claw back much of the ground lost in this week’s earlier tech-driven selloff. Notably, the pullback earlier in the week didn’t spread meaningfully into other sectors, with investors instead rotating into value names — a sign that risk appetite has not faded significantly despite increased hawkishness from the Federal Reserve under Kevin Warsh.

Inflation Data Looms Large

Today’s release of the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index — once the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, though Warsh is understood to favour a trimmed mean measure instead — carries particular weight, with consensus forecasts pointing to a year-on-year reading of 3.4%, which would mark its highest level since October 2023.

Oil’s Slide Continues as Hormuz Reopens

Crude oil extended its decline, with some contracts falling back to levels last seen before the US-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said flows through the Strait of Hormuz are now nearing pre-war levels, with more than 20 tankers carrying roughly 35 million barrels having passed through since the reopening agreement took effect. The scale of the selloff has left crude more oversold, by its daily MACD, than at any point since April 2020 — when Covid-driven demand destruction briefly pushed some oil prices into negative territory.

Gold and Silver Hit Multi-Month Lows

Gold’s volatile year took another turn lower, breaking below $4,000 to hit levels last seen in early November — a sharp reversal from the all-time high near $5,600 it touched at the end of January before crashing to $4,400 within days. The next significant support sits around $3,800-$3,900. Silver fared similarly, falling to a seven-month low as both metals continue to struggle against a resurgent dollar. Both remain technically oversold on their daily MACD readings, and after a five-month correction, the conditions for a rebound are arguably building — even if the timing remains far from certain.

The EBM Take

The split between tech’s sharp rebound and the continued rout in gold, silver and oil tells the more interesting story this week. Micron’s results validate the AI infrastructure thesis that’s underpinned much of this year’s tech rally, but the simultaneous collapse in safe-haven assets suggests markets are pricing a genuinely lower-risk environment — falling oil, easing inflation expectations, and a Fed under Warsh that may have more room to ease than its recent hawkish rhetoric suggests. The risk is that this reading proves premature: with sterling, the yen and gold all under pressure simultaneously, and political transition still unresolved in the UK, the calm in currency and commodity markets looks more fragile than the enthusiasm currently driving chip stocks.

Related reads:

• Andy Burnham’s Path to Number 10 Leaves Bond Markets Bracing for a Reckoning
• Big Tech Sell-Off Drags Global Markets Into Red
• Oil Returns to Prewar Levels as Gulf Flows Surge

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