Asia stocks tumble, S.Korea’s KOSPI slumps 7% on chip rout, Fed rate fears

Asian stocks plummeted on Thursday, with South Korea's KOSPI falling 7.2%, Japan's Nikkei 225 sinking 4.7%, and the MSCI Asia Pacific index slipping nearly 3%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 1.1%, while China's CSI 300 and Shanghai Composite decreased 1.4% and 1.5%, respectively. The sell-off followed a weak day on Wall Street, where the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite plunged 1.9%.

The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index extended its losing streak to six sessions, while the Russell 2000 Equal Weight slipped into correction territory after falling 11% from its peak. Investors await Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing's earnings report, hoping for record earnings and positive guidance. South Korean memory-chip makers SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics took the biggest hits, with SK Hynix plunging 11.2% and Samsung falling 9.4%.

Japan's Kioxia and LG Innotek lost over 10%, while Taiwan's Largan, Foxconn, and TSMC dropped more than 2%. The declines were fueled by fears of Chinese semiconductor competition and rising U.S. inflation, which pushed the probability of a 25-basis-point Federal Reserve rate hike to 31.6%.