Nikkei plunges 4%, leading losses in Asia after Wall Street plummets on weak U.S. data
Employees work at the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE), operated by Japan Exchange Group Inc. (JPX), in Tokyo, Japan, on Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024.
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Asia-Pacific markets plunged on Wednesday, led by Japan’s Nikkei 225 after U.S. tech stocks sold off and weak U.S. economic data sparked recession fears.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 4.01%, leading losses in Asia, while the broad based Topix was down 2.74%.
Semiconductor related stocks such as Renesas Electronics plunged 10%, making it the largest loser on the index. Tokyo Electron lost 7.3%, while Advantest tumbled over 9%.
Softbank Group, which owns chip designer Arm, fell over 5.7%. Arm designs chips for Nvidia.
South Korea’s Kospi lost 2.61% on its open, as well as the small cap Kosdaq, which saw a 2.94% loss.
Heavyweights Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix — both Nvidia suppliers — lost 2.76% and 6.95% respectively.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 1.46%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index futures were at 17,487, lower than the HSI’s last close of 17,651.49.
In the U.S., chipmaker Nvidia lost over 9% in regular trading, dragging other counterparts along with it, such as Intel, AMD and Marvell.
The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH), an index that tracks semiconductor stocks, was down 7.5%, its worst day since March 2020.
Separately, the ISM manufacturing index for August came in at 47.2% for the month, up 0.4 percentage points from July, but below the 47.9% expected from Dow Jones. The gauge measures the percentage of companies reporting expansion, so anything below 50% represents contraction.
All three major indexes recorded their worst days since the Aug. 5 global sell-off. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.51% and the S&P 500 down 2.12%. The Nasdaq Composite saw the largest loss, tumbling 3.26%.
—CNBC’s Fred Imbert and Alex Harring contributed to this report.
