{"text":[[{"start":12.88,"text":"Oil surged past $114 a barrel for the first time since May on Friday, weighing on global markets already reeling from a brutal overnight sell-off in Big Tech stocks on Wall Street."}],[{"start":24,"text":"Brent crude, the international benchmark, was up as much as 1.4 per cent at $114.72 a barrel, extending a blistering rally amid fears of renewed escalation of the conflict in the Middle East. It later eased back to $113.36."}],[{"start":41.6,"text":"The recent upswing in the oil price threatens to inflict further damage on the global economy just as concerns over the sustainability of the AI boom and a French sovereign bond sell-off intensify."}],[{"start":53.12,"text":"The Nasdaq 100 closed down 2.9 per cent on Thursday after Meta’s blowout forecast for capex deepened anxiety over whether the historic — and increasingly debt-fuelled — AI investment boom would pay off."}],[{"start":66.48,"text":"It sparked a rush into haven assets that on Thursday drove US Treasuries to their best day since 2023, pushing the 10-year yield down 0.19 percentage points, as AI fears combined with another day of selling in riskier Eurozone bond markets and higher crude prices."}],[{"start":83.6,"text":"“The wobbles of recent weeks [have] all collided at once,” said Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid."}],[{"start":88.5,"text":"As European and US markets stabilised on Friday, 10-year Treasury yields were 0.03 percentage points higher at 4.98 per cent, while the yield on German Bunds, the Eurozone’s safe asset, slipped 0.01 points to 3.33 per cent."}],[{"start":104.12,"text":"French bonds also steadied after two days of heavy selling, with the 10-year yield falling 0.03 percentage points to 5.06 per cent. The spread with Germany was little changed at 1.7 percentage points, a level that before this week had not been reached since the Eurozone debt crisis."}],[{"start":122.36,"text":"The Nasdaq 100 was set to open 0.3 per cent higher on Friday. Futures tracking the S&P 500, which closed 1.2 per cent lower, were flat."}],[{"start":132.5,"text":"The region-wide Stoxx Europe 600 index was down 0.3 per cent in early trading after a 1 per cent fall on Thursday."}],[{"start":137.4,"text":"Earlier, volatile trading across Asian equity markets pushed South Korea’s tech-heavy Kospi index down as much as 4 per cent before recovering to close 0.3 per cent higher. Japan’s tech-heavy Nikkei 225 Average fell as much as 2 per cent before paring some losses to end 0.3 per cent lower."}],[{"start":158.64,"text":"Haven government bonds rallied sharply in Asia, with the yield on the 10-year Japanese government bond falling 0.08 percentage points to 2.8 per cent."}],[{"start":170.08,"text":"“Global investors are testing the risk that hyperscalers and the AI story is going to cave in and are looking for places to safely park cash,” said one Tokyo-based currency trader."}],[{"start":180.8,"text":"The Kospi has declined by almost a fifth this month and is more than 40 per cent off its record high in June, making it the world’s worst-performing stock market."}],[{"start":190.76,"text":"Thursday’s decline was led by memory-chip makers, as Meta’s spending plans revived doubts over the long-term viability of debt-financed AI infrastructure expansion. Samsung Electronics initially fell before closing up 0.5 per cent, while SK Hynix also reversed to finish 4.4 per cent higher."}],[{"start":208.92,"text":"SK Hynix said on Friday it would scrap the US listing of Solidigm, its California-based maker of Nand flash memory chips used to store data in electronic devices, blaming “recent capital market conditions and share price trends”."}],[{"start":223.08,"text":"Shoki Omori, a fixed-income strategist at Deutsche Bank, said concerns about the scale of the hyperscalers’ capital spending and the debt being raised to fund it had sent investors into safer assets such as US Treasuries."}],[{"start":234.96,"text":"However, he warned that the recent move into Japanese government bonds did not yet represent a repatriation of Japanese assets."}],[{"start":243.2,"text":"China’s CSI 300 Composite index fell as much as 1.9 per cent before also erasing losses to end 1.7 per cent higher."}],[{"start":258.06,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1792748548_8077.mp3"}