SHENZHEN, CHINA – AUGUST 26: An aerial view of the Shenzhen skyline on August 26, 2020 in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province of China. (Photo by He Shaoping/VCG via Getty Images)
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Asia-Pacific markets fell Friday, tracking Wall Street declines on persistent concerns over lofty valuations in artificial intelligence stocks.
Shares of major AI companies fell Thursday stateside, weighing down on the broader U.S. market. The biggest declines were from Nvidia, Microsoft, Palantir Technologies, Broadcom and Advanced Micro Devices.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index tumbled 2.03%. Shares of AI-related stocks were the key drag: SoftBank was down over 8%, semiconductor testing equipment maker Advantest lost more than 7%, chipmaker Renesas Electronics fell 4%, and Tokyo Electron, a chip production equipment maker, declined 2.17%.
The Topix index retreated 1.18%.
South Korea’s Kospi plunged 3.1% in volatile trading, while the small-cap Kosdaq lost 3.45%. The country’s memory chip giants, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, lost 2.62% and 3.71%, respectively.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.72%
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell 1.14%, while the mainland’s CSI 300 lost 0.3%.
China’s October exports plunged 1.1% in U.S. dollar terms from a year earlier, official data showed Friday, missing expectations of a 3% growth in a Reuters survey and a steep drop from the 8.3% surge in September.
Imports also missed expectations, growing 1% year on year in October. Economists had expected a 3.2% growth, down from 7.4% in September. That comes as weak domestic demand continues to weigh on the back of a prolonged housing slump, rising job insecurity, and the tapering of consumption-focused stimulus measures.
India’s Nifty 50 lost 0.63%, while the Sensex index was 0.49% lower.
Shares of Bharti Airtel slumped after a unit of Singapore-based telecom firm Singtel announced Friday it had sold a stake in the Indian company for 1.5 billion Singapore dollars ($1.15 billion).
Singtel shares gained as much as 5.11% on Friday, hitting an all-time intraday high, while Airtel lost as much as 4.34%.
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Singtel said the sale was to “proactively optimise its portfolio through asset recycling,” and would take its stake in Airtel down to 27.5% from 28.3%. CFO Arthur Lang said that with this transaction, asset sales from Singtel have now reached SG$5.6 billion, more than half of the company’ medium term monetisation target of SG$9 billion.
U.S. futures edged higher in early Asian hours after Thursday’s tech sell-off.
Overnight, the Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 398.70 points, or 0.84%, to close at 46,912.30. The S&P 500 traded down by 1.12%, to settle at 6,720.32, while the Nasdaq Composite tumbled 1.9% to end at 23,053.99.
— CNBC’s Sean Conlon and Sarah Min contributed to this report.