Technology stocks lead markets higher, while oil prices keep rising

The strength for AI stocks began in Asia, where South Korea’s Kospi index jumped 6.2%. Its market is dominated by two huge tech companies, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, and the index has already had drops of 8.9%, 7.9% and 5.3% so far this month.

From Amsterdam, ASML, a bellwether of the chipmaking industry, reported stronger revenue growth for the latest quarter than it had forecast. CEO Christophe Fouquet said continuing progress in the AI boom has customers accelerating their expansions, and the maker of chipmaking machinery gave a forecast for revenue growth in the summer that topped analysts’ expectations.

The strength helped calm some of the worries that have sent AI-related stocks spinning recently. Chief among them is the possibility that their prices shot too high in the euphoria around AI. Worries have been rising that surging demand for AI chips and data centers may fizzle if they don’t produce enough profits and productivity to make all the investments worth it.

On Wall Street, strong profit reports from several big U.S. companies also helped to lift the market.

BlackRock rose 7.3% after the company behind some of the most popular investment funds reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. CEO Laurence Fink said its iShares funds topped $6 trillion in assets under management during the quarter, roughly doubling in three years.

Bank of New York Mellon rose 2.7%, and Morgan Stanley added 0.6% following their profit reports. They followed a spate of strong earnings reports a day earlier from many of the biggest U.S. banks.

They helped offset a drop for Elevance Health, which fell 8.5% even though it reported stronger profit and revenue than analysts expected.

Expectations are high for U.S. companies’ profit growth during the spring. They’ll need to beat them to justify the big moves their stock prices have made, with indexes near their records.

The U.S. stock market, meanwhile, broadly got a lift from another report showing inflation slowed in the United States last month. This one said inflation at the wholesale level slowed to 5.5% last month from 6% in May, and it was a much better reading than the acceleration that economists expected.

The day before, a separate report said that inflation that U.S. consumers are feeling was also not as bad as economists expected last month.

Such numbers take pressure off the Federal Reserve, which is considering raising interest rates. Higher rates would keep a lid on inflation, but they also slow the economy and hurt prices for all kinds of investments.

Following the inflation report, traders see just a 9% chance that the Fed will raise its main interest rate at its next meeting in a couple weeks. That’s down from the nearly 42% probability they saw on Monday, before the inflation reports, according to data from CME Group.

That helped send the yield on the 10-year Treasury down to 4.56% from 4.58% late Tuesday and from 4.62% the day before.

Still, upward pressure on inflation remains. The price for a barrel of Brent crude rose 0.5% to $85.19 following days of back-and-forth strikes by the United States and Iran across the Middle East.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard threatened Wednesday to halt all energy exports from the Middle East because of the blockade the U.S. military has put in place to prevent tankers carrying Iranian oil from using the Strait of Hormuz.

“The export of oil and gas from the region will be either for everyone or for no one,” the Revolutionary Guard said.

In stock markets abroad, European indexes were mixed amid mostly modest movements.

In Asia, stocks rose 1.4% in Hong Kong but fell 0.3% in Shanghai after the Chinese government said its economy expanded at a 4.3% annualized pace last quarter, down from the 5% growth rate at the start of the year.

AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed to this report.