Employees work at the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE), operated by Japan Exchange Group Inc. (JPX), in Tokyo, Japan, on Thursday, January 4, 2024.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg |
Markets in the Asia-Pacific region plunged on Wednesday, led by Japan’s Nikkei225 after US technology stocks sold off and weak US economic data sparked recession fears.
Japan's Nikkei225 was down 4.15%, leading losses in Asia, while the broader Topix fell 3.55%.
Semiconductor-related stocks such as Renesas Electronics The stock fell by 9 percent, making it the biggest loser in the index. Tokyo Electron lost 8.73%, while Advantage fell by over 7.7%.
Softbank Groupwhich owns the chip designer Arm, fell by over 7.8 percent. Arm develops chips for Nvidia.
South Korea's Kospi lost 3.05 percent, as did the small cap Kosdaq, which suffered a loss of almost 3.8 percent.
Chip giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix – both suppliers to Nvidia – lost 3.59 percent and 7.72 percent respectively.
The Taiwan Weighted Index fell by 4.46%, with the heavyweights Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing company minus 5.21% and Hon Hai Precision Industry — known internationally as Foxconn — fell 3.51%. The index lost as much as 5.29% in early trading before recovering to current levels.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 lost nearly 2%, largely due to weakness in oil prices. The country's GDP grew 1% year-on-year in the second quarter, in line with expectations, and 0.2% quarter-on-quarter, slightly below the 0.3% expected by economists polled by Reuters.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index fell 1.2%, while the CSI 300 in mainland China fell 0.58%.
Chinese chip stocks also suffered some weakness, although these had nothing to do with Nvidia's supply chain. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation minus 1.95% and Hua Hong Semiconductor lost 1.06%.
Separately, the Caixin Services Purchasing Managers' Index for August showed that China's services sector grew more slowly compared to July, with the PMI falling to 51.6 from 52.1.
In the US, chip manufacturer Nvidia lost over 9 percent in regular trading, dragging other competitors such as Intel, AMD and Marvell along with it.
The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH), an index that tracks semiconductor stocks, lost 7.5%, its worst day since March 2020.
Separately, the ISM manufacturing index came in at 47.2 percent in August, up 0.4 percentage points from July but below the 47.9 percent expected for the Dow Jones. The index measures the percentage of companies reporting growth, so anything below 50 percent represents a decline.
All three major indexes recorded their worst days since the global sell-off on August 5. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.51 percent and the S&P 500 fell 2.12 percent. The Nasdaq Composite recorded the biggest loss, falling 3.26 percent.
— CNBC's Fred Imbert and Alex Harring contributed to this report.
Comments are closed.