Deepening tech sell-off drags stocks lower as major markets slide

Asian stock markets experienced a sharp decline on Thursday, in advance of European markets opening on the following day. South Korean and Japanese indexes both suffered heavy losses, as the sell-off of technology shares continued to intensify following the release of hotter-than-anticipated inflation data from the United States.

Global equity futures were also down on the same day. In South Korea, the Kospi index fell by 7.7%, settling at 5,548.78, a significant drop from its all-time high in June, which had been driven by heightened optimism around the artificial intelligence revolution.

Notable declines were seen in Samsung Electronics, which plummeted by 9.5%, and SK Hynix, a South Korean memory chipmaker, which saw its shares plunge 11.4%. In Japan, the Nikkei 225 index plummeted by 4.8%, reaching 64,489.06. Tech investor SoftBank Group took a 9.4% hit, while chip equipment manufacturer Tokyo Electron slipped 7.3%, and memory chipmaker Kioxia Holdings suffered an 11.2% decline.

Taiwan's Taiex, which had also benefited from the artificial intelligence boom, fell by 3%. The leading chipmaker in the island, TSMC, dropped 2.2% ahead of its earnings report. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index slipped by 1%, reaching 24,071.25, while the Shanghai Composite index declined by 1.4%, settling at 3,713.22.

Australian shares, represented by the S&P/ASX 200, saw a slight decline of 0.1%, settling at 8,715.60. The declines followed losses on Wall Street on Wednesday, with the S&P 500 falling by 1.1%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average decreasing by 0.1%, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite slipping 1.9% as AI-related stocks fell.

Notable among the tech giants, Nvidia dropped 3.2%, Broadcom lost 3.1%, and Advanced Micro Devices, or AMD, saw a 5.7% decline. The US reported a consumer price index rise of 3.7% year-on-year in September, a higher increase than the 3.4% rise in August, and worse than what economists had anticipated.