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Asian stocks followed their U.S. counterparts by falling on Tuesday, but European indexes were climbing as investors looked for ways to escape Monday’s brutal tech selloff.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index closed 1.4% lower, dragged down by a slide in chip stocks. The rapid rise of Chinese startup DeepSeek’s newest artificial intelligence model, which was seemingly developed at a much lower cost than rivals like ChatGPT, has sparked fears about a slowdown in spending on semiconductors. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng managed to eke out a 0.1% gain, while several other Asian markets were shut for the Lunar New Year holiday.
It was a different story in Europe. The continent’s flagship Stoxx 600 gauge climbed 0.6% in morning trading, and indexes in London, Paris, and Frankfurt were all trading in the green. Markets across the Atlantic are dominated by luxury, energy, and car stocks–so it’s no surprise investors were less rattled by the DeepSeek developments.