Nikkei sees worst day since early August sell-off; Taiex leads losses in Asia as tech stocks fall

Asia-Pacific markets plunged on Wednesday, led by Nikkei 225 and Taiwan’s Taiex after U.S. tech stocks sold off and weak U.S. economic data sparked recession fears.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 4.24% to close at 37,047.61, while the broad-based Topix dropped 3.65% to 2,633.49. Both indexes saw their worst one-day loss since the Aug. 5 sell-off.

Semiconductor related stocks Renesas Electronics plunged 8.50%, Tokyo Electron lost 8.55%, while Advantest tumbled 7.74%.

Softbank Group, which owns chip designer Arm, fell 7.73%. Arm designs chips for Nvidia.

South Korea’s Kospi lost 3.15%, ending at 2,580.8, while the small cap Kosdaq dropped 3.76% loss to close at 731.75.

Chip giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix — both Nvidia suppliers — lost 3.31% and 8.02% respectively.

The Taiwan Weighted Index dropped 4.52%, leading losses in Asia and finishing at 21,092.75, with heavyweights Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company down 5.21% and Hon Hai Precision Industry — known internationally as Foxconn — falling 3.51%.

The index lost as much as 5.29% in early trade, before recovering to current levels.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 1.88% to 7,950.5, mainly dragged by a weakness in oil prices.

The country’s second quarter GDP grew by 1% year-on-year, on par with expectations, and 0.2% quarter-on-quarter, slightly lower that the expected 0.3% expected among economists polled by Reuters.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was down 1.26% as of its final hour, while mainland China’s CSI 300 dropped 0.63% to hit a new seven-month low.

Chinese chip stocks also suffered some weakness despite these being unrelated to Nvidia’s supply chain, with state-linked Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation down 2.08% and Hua Hong Semiconductor falling 3.23%.

Separately, the Caixin services purchasing managers index for August showed that China’s service sector expanded at a slower rate compared to July, with the PMI falling to 51.6 from 52.1.

In the U.S., chipmaker Nvidia lost over 9% in regular trading, dragging other counterparts along with it, such as Intel, AMD and Marvell.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH), an index that tracks semiconductor stocks, was down 7.5%, its worst day since March 2020.

Separately, the ISM manufacturing index for August came in at 47.2% for the month, up 0.4 percentage points from July, but below the 47.9% expected from Dow Jones. The gauge measures the percentage of companies reporting expansion, so anything below 50% represents contraction.

All three major indexes recorded their worst days since the Aug. 5 global sell-off. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.51% and the S&P 500 down 2.12%. The Nasdaq Composite saw the largest loss, tumbling 3.26%.

—CNBC’s Fred Imbert and Alex Harring contributed to this report.