Asian shares tumble as global bond sell-off deepens

Nikkei sinks 3% as tech heavyweights SoftBank, Samsung slide

Asian shares tumbled Wednesday as a bond market sell-off deepened globally and Wall Street slipped a day earlier, according to an Associated Press dispatch from Hong Kong. U.S. futures also declined.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 dropped 3% to 64,278.95. SoftBank Group, described in the dispatch as a “multinational investment holding firm which invests in OpenAI,” fell 6.3%.

South Korea’s Kospi lost 3.6% to 6,588.95. Samsung Electronics declined 3.3%, and memory chipmaker SK Hynix fell 3.5%.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slipped 0.8% to 25,126.40, and the Shanghai Composite index dipped 0.9% to 3,943.22. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell 1.1% to 8,971.90, and Taiwan’s Taiex dropped 1.5%.

On Tuesday, Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 slipped 0.7%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.8%, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite fell 1%. The U.S. reported job openings grew slightly in July.

Among the biggest decliners, Nvidia dropped 1.5%, Amazon gave up 1.9% and Advanced Micro Devices fell 2.4%.

With Tuesday’s declines, the S&P 500 stood at 7,631.47, the Nasdaq Composite at 26,099.77 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average at 52,766.88 as of Sept. 2, according to FRED data.

Wednesday’s regional declines followed earlier pullbacks in Asian equities. MSI previously reported that South Korea’s Kospi dropped 5.2% on Aug. 19 as AI stocks extended their decline after Wall Street pulled back from its all-time high. Kospi leads Asian shares lower as AI stocks extend decline.