Asian Stocks Mirror Wall Street Plunge On Tech Weakness

Stocks in Asia tumbled on Wednesday as weakness in Wall Street's technology companies, with disappointing outlooks and tighter US curbs on chip sales, hit sentiments.

South Korean benchmark Kospi was 16 points, or 0.64% lower at 2,616, while the Japanese Nikkei 225 was down 683 points, or 1.71%, at 39,227 as of 10:05 a.m.

China's CSI 300 was trading lower, extending its losses from Tuesday's 3% decline, on additional relief expectations amid worsening deflation in the country. A gauge of US-listed Chinese shares slumped almost 6%.

Chinese stocks will be in focus as its housing minister has called for a press briefing on Thursday, where traders anticipate further easing for the property sector.

The plunge in Asian stocks follows a slump in Wall Street's technology companies after the semiconductor bellwether ASML suffered its worst day since 1998.

Bloomberg reported that the company booked only about half the orders analysts expected from chipmakers, showing signs of weakness in the industry. This fueled a selloff in chip-related stocks.

The sentiment in the tech space was further dampened by concerns of capping sales of AI chips from US companies, which could potentially hurt the top line. It sets a ceiling on export licenses for certain countries in the interest of national security, Bloomberg reported quoting people familiar with the matter.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.76% and 1.01%, respectively, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.75%.

Meanwhile, three of Southeast Asia’s biggest economies—Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines—will announce their monetary policy decisions on Wednesday.

Crude oil prices advanced on Wednesday after the possibility of targeting nuclear facilities was back as Israel said it would decide on its own on how to attack Iran. This comes after oil prices crashed by over 4% on Tuesday.

Brent crude was trading 0.28% higher at $74.46 a barrel as of 9:54 a.m. IST. West Texas Intermediate was up 0.35% at $0.25.