HONG KONG: Oil prices slipped Thursday after recent gains, with Brent crude trading near USD 95 a barrel, while Asian shares advanced.
US futures edged higher.
Renewed fighting between the US and Iran pushed oil prices sharply higher earlier in the week. US President Donald Trump said Wednesday he doesn't expect the US bombing campaign to last "much longer."
Brent crude, the international standard, fell 0.4% to USD 95.26 per barrel. Benchmark US crude shed 0.1% to USD 90.84 a barrel.
Tokyo's Nikkei 225 advanced 0.2% to 64,455.83. Among major gainers, OpenAI investor SoftBank Group rose 2.9%, memory chipmaker Kioxia Holdings rose 0.6%, and chip equipment manufacturer Tokyo Electron gained 0.8%.
South Korea's Kospi rose 1.4% to 6,656.81. Samsung Electronics was 1.3% higher, while memory chipmaker SK Hynix was up 1.4%.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng edged 0.1% higher, to 25,344.80. The Shanghai Composite index climbed 0.4% to 3,958.79.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.5% to 9,025.10.
The Taiex in Taiwan rose 0.6%, while India's Sensex climbed 0.3%.
The regional advance followed gains for stocks on Wall Street, where the benchmark S&P 500 gained 0.5% on Wednesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 0.6%, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite rose 0.5%.
Investors welcomed some encouraging signals about demand for artificial intelligence from two big tech companies, Dell and Palo Alto Networks. The AI boom has been the key driver behind the S&P 500's gains this year.
Dell Technologies surged 15.8% following strong quarterly profits. Among some of the biggest names, Nvidia gained 3.2%, Meta Platforms climbed 2.5%, and Micron Technology rose 2.4%.
Other big tech companies tied to the AI boom also rallied. Chipmaker Nvidia, whose big market value tends to give it more influence over the broader market's direction, rose 3.2%, while computer memory seller Micron Technology gained 2.4%.
In the bond market, the yield on the US 10-year Treasury fell to 4.77% from more than 4.81% early Wednesday after a global bond sell-off triggered growing concerns over inflation and the Iran war -caused energy shocks as well as rising US government debt.
The US is set to release an employment report for August on Friday.
In other dealings early Thursday, the Japanese yen strengthened sharply against the US dollar, with the dollar trading at 157.78 yen early Thursday, down from 158.71 yen late Wednesday. The dollar had surged to above 160 yen earlier in the week, raising expectations that regulators might intervene to prevent the yen from falling further.
The euro was trading at USD 1.1598, up from USD 1.1588.
