Employees work at the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE), operated by Japan Exchange Group Inc. (JPX), in Tokyo, Japan, Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024.
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Asia-Pacific stocks plunged on Wednesday, led by Japanese stocks Nikkei 225 Index After the United States Tech stocks sell off Weak U.S. economic data stoked fears of a recession.
Japanese Nikkei 225 Index It fell 3.06%, leading the decline in Asian stock markets, while the Topix fell 2.42%.
Korean Cospi The Kosdaq opened down 2.59%, with the small-cap Kosdaq down 3.05%.
Australian S&P/ASX 200 Index down 1.37%.
Hong Kong Hang Seng Index The futures index was at 17,487 points, lower than the Hang Seng Index’s last closing point of 17,651.49 points.
In the United States, chip manufacturers NVIDIA Losses exceeded 9% in regular trading, dragging down other peers such as Intel, AMD and Marvel.
The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH), an index tracking semiconductor stocks, fell 7.5%, its worst day since March 2020.
In addition, the ISM manufacturing index in August was 47.2%, an increase of 0.4 percentage points from July, but lower than the 47.9% expected by Dow Jones. The metric measures the percentage of companies reporting expansion, so anything below 50% represents contraction.
All three major stock indexes had their worst days since the global sell-off on August 5. Dow Jones Industrial Average down 1.51%, S&P 500 Index down 2.12%. this Nasdaq Index The largest decline occurred, down 3.26%.
—CNBC’s Fred Imbert and Alex Harring contributed to this report.
