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Asian shares fell sharply ahead of European markets opening on Thursday morning with indexes in South Korea and Japan sinking, as a sell-off of technology shares deepened after US stocks fell on hotter-than-expected inflation data.
Meanwhile, US equity futures were lower.
South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index lost 7.7% to 5,548.78. It was well below the 9,000 mark that it crossed in June at its all-time high driven by optimism over the global artificial intelligence frenzy.
Samsung Electronics slid 9.5% and South Korean memory chipmaker SK Hynix plunged 11.4%.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 tumbled 4.8% to 64,489.06. OpenAI investor SoftBank Group lost 9.4%. Chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron dropped 7.3%, and memory chipmaker Kioxia Holdings lost 11.2%.
Taiwan’s Taiex, which also benefited from the AI boom, fell 3%. Its leading chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., or TSMC, dropped 2.2% ahead of its earnings report.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 1% to 24,071.25. The Shanghai Composite index slipped 1.4% to 3,713.22.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged down 0.1% to 8,715.60.
Declines follow Wall Street losses
The declines followed losses on Wall Street on Wednesday. The S&P 500 dropped 1.1%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 0.1%, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite slipped 1.9% as AI-related stocks fell.
Nvidia lost 3.2%, Broadcom gave up 3.1%, and Advanced Micro Devices, or AMD, declined 5.7%.
The US reported on Wednesday that the consumer price index rose 3.7% year-on-year in September, up from 3.4% in August and worse than what economists had expected.
Additional sources • AP