Tourists visit the Nanjing Road Scenic Area in Shanghai, China, on October 20, 2025.
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Asia-Pacific markets slid Friday, tracking losses on Wall Street, as technology stocks continued to come under pressure and Fed rate-cut doubts swirled.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index lost 1.77% to close at 50,376.53, while the Topix slid 0.65% to end the trading day at 3,359.81.
Japanese giant SoftBank plunged nearly 9% in early trading, marking its third consecutive day of decline after it said Tuesday it had sold its entire stake in Nvidia. Shares of the conglomerate closed 6.57% lower.
South Korea’s Kospi fell 3.81% to 4,011.57, and the small-cap Kosdaq was 2.23% lower at 897.9. Index heavyweight Samsung Electronics slipped more than 3%, while SK Hynix, which supplies memory chips to Nvidia, fell 5%.
The South Korean strengthened 0.72% to 1,460.0 against the after the finance minister said Friday that the country’s FX authorities will consult major market players, including the national pension fund and key exporters, on ways to stabilize the won, Reuters reported.
According to the report, Finance Minister Koo Yun-cheol told senior economic officials that steps were needed to tackle the structural mismatch in U.S. dollar supply and demand, amid growing concerns over currency market volatility.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 1.36% to 8,634.5.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index lost 1.79%, while mainland’s CSI 300 dipped 1.57% to 4,628.14 after government data Friday showed China’s slowdown worsened in October, dragged by soft consumer demand and a deepening property downturn.
Fixed-asset investment, which includes real estate, contracted 1.7% for the first ten months of the year, steepening from a 0.5% decline in the January-to-September period. Industrial output expanded 4.9% year on year in October, missing expectations for a 5.5% jump and slowing down from a 6.5% rise in the prior month.
Retail sales climbed 2.9% in October from a year earlier, topping expectations for a 2.8% growth in a Reuters poll, but softening from a 3% year-on-year rise in September.
The Chinese onshore yuan rose to a one-year high of 7.0908 against the dollar, data from LSEG showed.
CNY
Overnight in the U.S., all three major averages closed lower as investors continued to sell shares of technology companies, especially those in the artificial intelligence trade, amid worries about their valuations.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 797.60 points, or 1.65%, to settle at 47,457.22, well off the record highs set in the previous session. The S&P 500 shed 1.66% to finish at 6,737.49.
The broad-based index saw notable declines in the information technology and communication services sectors, led by Disney, which fell nearly 8% on mixed results for its fiscal fourth quarter. The Nasdaq Composite pulled back 2.29% to close at 22,870.36. All three major averages, as well as the small-cap Russell 2000 index, suffered their worst day since Oct. 10.
Recent remarks from Fed chair Jerome Powell’s colleagues point to plenty of apprehension over whether the central bank should deliver its third consecutive easing of policy when it meets Dec. 9-10.
“Given my baseline outlook, it will likely be appropriate to keep policy rates at the current level for some time to balance the inflation and employment risks in this highly uncertain environment,” Boston Fed President Susan Collins recently said.
As a result, markets have recalibrated their expectations. Whereas traders as recently as a few days ago were pricing in at least a 2-to-1 probability of a quarter percentage point cut, that’s now flipped to a coin toss, according to futures markets readings tabulated by the CME Group in its FedWatch tool.
— CNBC’s Jeff Cox, Sean Conlon and Pia Singh contributed to this report.
