Asia-Pacific markets mostly fell Thursday after Wall Street closed lower amid rising geopolitical tensions and comments from U.S. President Donald Trump.
The Nikkei 225 cratered 844.72 points, or 1.6%, to 51,117.26, weighed down by basic materials and technology stocks. Among the biggest decliners were SoftBank, which plunged 7.59%, and Tokyo Electron, which provides essential chipmaking equipment to foundries that manufacture Nvidia’s chips, was 4.01% lower.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index lost 309.64 points, or 1.2%, to 26,149.31, led lower by losses in basic materials and technology stocks. Lenovo Group fell 3.44%, Kuaishou Technology lost 2.85%, and Baidu traded 2.76% lower.
Shares of Knowledge Atlas Technology JSC, better known as Zhipu, rose as much as 15% on their Hong Kong debut, following a $558-million initial public offering that made it the first of China’s “AI tigers” to go public.
U.S. defense stocks fell after Trump said he “will not permit” defense companies to issue dividends or stock buybacks until they address his complaints about the industry, including executive pay packages and production issues.
Oil prices also dropped overnight after Trump said that Venezuela’s interim authorities would turn over as much as 50 million barrels of crude to the U.S., raising concerns about an increase in global supply.
Australian markets gained a bit. Shares of BlueScope Steel fell 1.57% after the company rejected a $9-billion takeover bid from U.S.-based Steel Dynamics and Australian conglomerate SGH, which also saw its stock drop 1.92%.
On Thursday afternoon, BlueScope’s biggest investor, AustralianSuper, increased its voting power in the steel company to 13.52%, from 12.5%, according to a filing after the bell.
In other markets
The CSI 300 in Shanghai dropped 39.01 points, or 0.8%, to 4,739.07.
In Korea, the Kospi inched forward 1.31 points to 4,552.37.
In Taiwan, the Taiex faded 74.92 points, or 0.3%, to 30,360.55
In Singapore, the Straits Times Index eased 8.55 points, or 0.2%. to 4,739.07.
In New Zealand, the NZX 50 eked up 1.84 points to 13,716.86.
In Australia, the ASX 200 recovered 25.2 points, or 0.3%, to 8,720.76.
