A deepening tech sell-off drags Asian stocks lower ahead of Europe’s open as South Korean and Japanese markets sink.
Asian shares fell sharply ahead of European markets opening on Thursday morning with indexes in South Korea and Japan sinking, as a sell-off of technology shares deepened after US stocks fell on hotter-than-expected inflation data.
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Meanwhile, US equity futures were lower.
South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index lost 7.7% to 5,548.78. It was well below the 9,000 mark that it crossed in June at its all-time high driven by optimism over the global artificial intelligence frenzy.
Samsung Electronics slid 9.5% and South Korean memory chipmaker SK Hynix plunged 11.4%.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 tumbled 4.8% to 64,489.06. OpenAI investor SoftBank Group lost 9.4%. Chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron dropped 7.3%, and memory chipmaker Kioxia Holdings lost 11.2%.
Taiwan’s Taiex, which also benefited from the AI boom, fell 3%. Its leading chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., or TSMC, dropped 2.2% ahead of its earnings report.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 1% to 24,071.25. The Shanghai Composite index slipped 1.4% to 3,713.22.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged down 0.1% to 8,715.60.
Declines follow Wall Street losses
The declines followed losses on Wall Street on Wednesday. The S&P 500 dropped 1.1%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 0.1%, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite slipped 1.9% as AI-related stocks fell.
Nvidia lost 3.2%, Broadcom gave up 3.1%, and Advanced Micro Devices, or AMD, declined 5.7%.
The US reported on Wednesday that the consumer price index rose 3.7% year-on-year in September, up from 3.4% in August and worse than what economists had expected.
