Highlights for the morning: gold sags, Indonesia's market collapses, Apple has a chip shortage

Gold after record growth went into correction amid strengthening of the dollar and expectations of personnel decisions in the Federal Reserve System. Investors in Indonesia sold off shares due to the risk of the country's downgrade in MSCI indices. These and other topics - in our review of key events in the morning of January 30.

Gold fell sharply, showing the first decline in almost two weeks: the dollar strengthened amid reports that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is preparing to nominate Kevin Warsh to head the Federal Reserve, reports Bloomberg. On Friday, January 30, metal quotations were losing up to 4.8%, while the dollar index rose, making precious metals more expensive for buyers outside the United States.

Analysts call the movement an expected correction after the rapid growth. Despite the pullback, gold has risen more than 20% since the beginning of the year, supported by geopolitical risks, US trade threats and Trump's pressure on the Fed.

The head of the Indonesian Stock Exchange Iman Rahman resigned after a sharp collapse of the market, which for two days lost about $84 billion of capitalization, reports CNBC. The reason was investors' concern over the possible downgrade of Indonesia's status in MSCI indices from emerging to frontier market due to problems with trading transparency.

The authorities and regulators are trying to stabilize the situation: the financial supervisor promised to increase the minimum free float to 15%, and the exchange itself said it was ready to take into account the comments of MSCI. On Friday, January 30, the Jakarta Composite index rebounded by 1.18% after a sharp drop in the previous days.

After the publication of the quarterly report, Microsoft shares fell about 10% on January 29, which was the largest daily decline since March 2020, writes CNBC. The company's market capitalization fell by $357 billion, to $3.22 trillion. Investors were disappointed by weaker-than-expected growth in the Azure cloud business, revenue forecast for the More Personal Computing division and margins. The company attributed this to the fact that some of the new data center capacity was allocated to internal needs rather than customer needs.

On Wall Street, assessments are divided, with some analysts believing Microsoft needs to accelerate data center construction and prove the effectiveness of its AI investments, while others support management's strategy of focusing on long-term growth, even at the cost of short-term pressure on the stock.

Apple reported strong results and expects revenue growth of 13-16% in the current quarter, but the company is bogged down by supply constraints for iPhone chips, CNBC writes. The main problem is a lack of capacity to produce the latest A- and M-series processors, not a shortage of memory, although rising memory prices will add to the pressure in the coming months.

At the same time, Apple expects to maintain high profitability: the company expects the share of profit in revenue to remain at a very high level and even be higher than in the previous quarter. To mitigate risks, Apple is gradually expanding its access to chip production and increasing its purchases from U.S. factories.

- Japan's broad Topix index was up 0.71%, with the Nikkei 225 adding 0.12% in Jan. 30 trading.

- Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was falling by 1.87%. Mainland China's CSI 300 index fell by 0.72%.

- In South Korea, the Kospi index was up 0.87 percent, while the Kosdaq was falling 0.98 percent.

- Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was down 0.65 percent.

- S&P 500 futures were down 0.57%, Nasdaq Composite futures were down 0.7% and Dow Jones Industrial Average exchange-traded contracts were down 0.51%.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor