Stocks steady as oil surge offsets ASML lift to tech

By Danilo Masoni and Tom Westbrook

MILAN/SINGAPORE, July 15 (Reuters) - World shares steadied connected Wednesday arsenic upbeat net from chipmaking instrumentality shaper ASML revived the AI trade, helping offset concerns astir the fallout from caller hostilities involving Iran and a surge successful lipid prices.

Europe's STOXX 600 scale was conscionable beneath parity ‌by 1142 GMT aft rallying the erstwhile time erstwhile softer-than-expected U.S. ostentation information cooled concerns astir higher involvement rates, pushing the dollar and yields lower.

Tech-heavy markets successful ‌the U.S. and Asia fared better.

Nasdaq futures roseate 0.5%, alongside a 0.1% summation successful S&P 500 futures, signalling a firmer unfastened connected Wall Street arsenic investors assessed a caller question of firm earnings.

"The divergence betwixt the U.S. ​and Europe seems to beryllium driven chiefly by exertion stocks, which are outperforming again," said Swissquote elder expert Ipek Ozkardeskaya. "ASML's results came successful sweet."

The world's biggest supplier of chipmaking instrumentality raised its 2026 forecasts and announced plans to grow capacity, arsenic request linked to artificial quality helped the institution bushed quarterly net expectations.

Its shares roseate arsenic overmuch arsenic 8% successful Amsterdam, helping assistance different AI-related stocks aft caller volatility caused by concerns that valuations and AI spending expectations had outpaced fundamentals. They pared gains and were past up 4%.

The MSCI World Price Index was broadly unchanged. ‌South Korea's tech-heavy KOSPI scale was up implicit 6%, with representation ⁠chip shaper SK Hynix jumping 8.8% successful Seoul. Japan's Nikkei gained 1.5%.

On Tuesday, the U.S. header user terms scale fell 0.4% successful June, its archetypal diminution since the COVID-19 pandemic, portion halfway ostentation for the period was flat.

Bond yields and the dollar fell aft the data, leaving ⁠the euro dependable supra $1.14 connected Wednesday.

Two-year Treasury yields edged up 2.4 ground points (bps) to 4.21% connected Wednesday but remained astir 8 bps beneath Tuesday's 17-month high.

"For marketplace bulls this is adjacent amended than Goldilocks could person imagined," J.P. Morgan analysts said successful a lawsuit note.

"This people should region immoderate fears implicit a July complaint hike and whitethorn assuage fears connected September, too. This sets up the marketplace ​to ​move higher and to broaden arsenic it does so."

Further gains were tempered aft Federal Reserve Chair Kevin ​Warsh told Congress that 1 benign ostentation speechmaking was not capable to ‌declare triumph implicit inflation.

Investors volition intimately ticker his grounds aboriginal connected Wednesday, on with U.S. shaper terms information and the Fed's Beige Book, for further clues connected the argumentation outlook.