Asian shares fell on Wednesday after Wall Street started 2024 with a slump, giving back some of last year's powerful gains.
US futures were lower and oil prices were little changed.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 1% to 16,618.50, helped by a 2% decline in technology stocks, while the Shanghai Composite index gained 0.1% to 2,966.13.
Prices of Chinese gaming companies rose, with Tencent Holdings and NetEase both adding more than 1% after local reports that a senior official responsible for overseeing China's gaming industry had been fired after the publication of draft rules last month caused a collapse in gaming stocks caused a few days before. Christmas.
The Australian S&The P/ASX 200 fell 1.4% to 7,523.20. The South Korean benchmark fell 2.3% to 2,607.31 after hovering near a 19-month high on Tuesday amid the short-selling ban.
Bangkok's SET lost less than 0.1% and India's Sensex fell 0.4%.
Japanese markets remained closed for the New Year holidays.
On Wall Street on Tuesday, the S&The P500 fell 0.6% to 4,742.83 after spending the year on the brink of a record high.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.1% to 37,715.04, and the Nasdaq composite led the market lower with a decline of 1.6% to 14,765.94.
Some of the sharper market declines came from stocks that were the biggest winners last year. Apple lost 3.6% on its worst day in almost five months, and Nvidia and Meta Platforms both fell more than 2%. Tesla, another member of the “Magnificent 7” Big Tech stocks that accounted for more than half of Wall Street returns last year, swung between losses and gains after reporting deliveries and production for the end of 2024. ended the day with less than 0.1%.
Netherlands-based ASML went bankrupt after the Dutch government partially revoked a license to ship certain products to customers in China. The United States is pushing for restrictions on the export of chip technology to China. ASML's US-listed shares fell 5.3%, and US chip stocks also weakened.
Healthcare stocks held up better after Wall Street analysts upgraded ratings on a number of stocks, including a 13.1% jump for Moderna. Amgen's 3.3% rise and UnitedHealth Group's 2.4% rise were two of the strongest forces lifting the Dow Jones.
Investors were prepared for a pause in the big rally that saw the S&P500 to nine consecutive winning weeks and within 0.6% of the record set almost exactly two years ago. That big increase came on hopes that the Federal Reserve had engineered a deft escape from high inflation: a situation in which high interest rates slow the economy enough to cool inflation, but not so much that they trigger a painful recession.
A report on Tuesday showed that the US manufacturing industry may be weaker than thought. According to S., the economy has shrunk more in the past month than an earlier preliminary reading indicated&P Global, as new sales fell due to weakness both abroad and at home. However, business confidence rose to the highest level in three months.
A separate report showed that construction spending growth slowed slightly more in November than economists had expected.
Like stocks, Treasury yields in the bond market also fell slightly on Tuesday, following their big moves since the fall. The yield on the 10-year government bond rose to 3.94% from 3.87% at the end of Friday.
More high-profile reports on the economy will be released later this week. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve will release the minutes of its latest policy meeting, a meeting that raised hopes for a series of rate cuts this year.
Another report Wednesday will show how many job openings U.S. employers had advertised at the end of November, data that the Federal Reserve is closely monitoring. On Friday, the US government will release its monthly summary of job growth across the country.
In other trading, U.S. benchmark crude lost 2 cents to $70.36 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international standard, lost 4 cents to $75.85 a barrel.
The US dollar rose from 141.99 yen to 142.11 Japanese yen. The euro rose from $1.0936 to $1.0959.
