Global stock markets rise as investors continue to bet on AI

Global stock markets have climbed as investors continue to bet on bright prospects for the tech giants driving the AI boom.

In the United States, all three major stock indexes rose on Tuesday, led by the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, which gained 1.18 percent.

The benchmark S&P 500 rose 0.6 percent, while the narrower Dow Jones Industrial Average edged up 0.03 percent.

Five of the “Magnificent Seven” tech stocks rose, led by Tesla, up 4.04 percent.

Amazon gained 1.61 percent, while Apple and Alphabet gained 0.93 percent and 0.9 percent, respectively.

Nvidia, the world’s most valuable public company, rose almost 1 percent after announcing a $3bn investment in Meta’s equity offering.

Meta fell 1.64 percent, while Microsoft fell 0.24 percent.

Other big movers in tech included CoreWeave, Western Digital and Advanced Micro Devices, which gained 7.94 percent, 6.95 percent and 5.45 percent, respectively.

Asian stock markets followed Wall Street’s gains on Wednesday.

South Korea’s KOSPI led the pack, with the benchmark index closing up 6.63 percent.

The surge came as South Korea’s SK Hynix, one of the world’s top three memory chip makers, announced blockbuster third-quarter results, with operating profit soaring about 630 percent year-on-year to 83.33 trillion won ($62.4bn).

SK Hynix’s South Korea-listed shares soared 10.89 percent following the results.

In Japan, the benchmark Nikkei 225 ended the day up 1.08 percent, while the TAIEX in Taiwan climbed 2.04 percent.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index was up 0.33 percent shortly before market closing.

“A rally in a host of AI-related stocks including neocloud group CoreWeave, data storage specialist Western Digital and IT solutions provider Super Micro Computing implies that investors aren’t over the AI craze just yet,” Dan Coatsworth, head of markets at AJ Bell in London, told Al Jazeera.

“These types of stocks have become a litmus test for the mood of the market. They typically fall when investors are worried that the AI story might be running out of steam, and they rise when animal spirits are running high around the technological revolution,” Coatsworth said.

“The big unknown is whether this is the start of a new AI stock rally, or just a relief bounce after a period where investors were starting to question how long positive momentum could be sustained,” he added.

Investors are eagerly anticipating upcoming earnings reports from chief tech players as they try to gauge whether their huge investments in AI will pay dividends.

Microsoft and Alphabet report their latest results on Wednesday, followed by Amazon on Thursday and Apple on Monday.

On Monday, AI giant Anthropic filed paperwork for its hotly anticipated IPO, reporting a net loss of $80.7bn in the first half of 2026 on $16.3bn in revenue.

Tech firms have poured hundreds of billions of dollars each into AI infrastructure, prompting debate over whether a speculative market bubble could be forming similar to the one that preceded the 2000 dot-com crash.

Global AI investment is forecast to hit $2.7 trillion in 2026 and $3.6 trillion in 2027, according to Gartner, a technology insights company.

Oil prices, which have been elevated since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran, rose nearly 2 percent percent amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, including hostilities between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis.

Futures for Brent crude, the global benchmark, topped $116 a barrel, up more than 60 percent from before the war began.