use they import energy and pay for it in US dollars. That matters after the earlier oil spike fed into inflation in Thailand and the Philippines, complicating growth and central bank decisions. As crude cooled, some pressure eased on regional currencies including the South Korean won, Malaysia’s ringgit, Indonesia’s rupiah, and the Philippine peso. Investors also rotated back to semiconductors. Solid tech earnings and steady data-center chip demand – tied to big tech spending on servers – reinforced the “AI and semiconductor supercycle” narrative.
Why should I care?
For markets: Asia’s benchmarks are leaning hard on chipmakers.
Record closes in South Korea’s Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) and Taiwan’s benchmark show how much performance is being driven by a few chip stocks. That can magnify gains when demand is strong, but it also concentrates risk: analyst firm Nomura has said chipmakers are close to half of the KOSPI, so any wobble in memory-chip prices, US export rules, or big tech spending plans can hit the wider index fast.
For you: Oil prices can feed through to everyday costs and rates.
Lower crude can eventually filter into transport and food prices, while higher oil can push them up. That’s one reason the earlier spike helped lift inflation in Thailand and the Philippines. When inflation cools, central banks often have more room to keep interest rates steady, which affects borrowing costs. In Malaysia, economists polled by Reuters expect Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), the country’s central bank, to keep its policy rate at 2.75% at its next meeting if energy-driven inflation stays contained.
