Photo: nappa / Wikimedia Commons
Asian stock markets tumbled Friday as Wall Street’s artificial intelligence selloff swept across the region, knocking Tokyo’s Nikkei below 60,000 for the first time in nearly half a year, triggering a circuit breaker in Seoul and sending Taiwan’s benchmark to its fourth-largest single-day point loss.
The Nikkei 225 closed down 6.1% at 57,332.92, its deepest one-day drop since April 2025. SoftBank Group and memory-chip maker Kioxia each fell more than 10% intraday, while chip-testing firm Advantest dropped more than 8%.
South Korea’s Kospi plunged more than 8% after the open, tripping a 20-minute trading halt, before recovering to close down 6.02% at 5,059.69 as the finance minister temporarily eased rules on retail investors’ leveraged bets. SK Hynix closed down 9.4% and Samsung Electronics nearly 6%, and the Kospi has now lost almost half its value since hitting a record in mid-June. In Taipei, TSMC fell as much as 8.5% intraday before closing down 4.7%, and the Taiex ended down 1,873 points, or 4.51%, at 39,701.64, its fourth-largest single-day point loss, after the finance ministry called in state-owned bank executives to support the market. For the week the Taiex lost 12.2%, its biggest weekly decline since 1991.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell about 0.9% and the Shanghai Composite about 1.1% in afternoon trading, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 closed 0.5% lower at 9,020.80. Singapore’s Straits Times Index was down more than 2% by late morning, with semiconductor firms AEM Holdings and UMS Integration falling as much as 13% and 15.2% intraday.
The rout followed Wall Street’s worst session in months. The Nasdaq fell 5.5% Thursday, its steepest percentage drop since April 2025, while the S&P 500 lost more than 4% and the Dow more than 3%. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index has collapsed about 16% this week, its worst run since April of last year.
Investors are pricing in the risk that Democrats’ sweeping midterm victories will bring tougher regulation of artificial intelligence and new curbs on data-center construction, a buildout that has powered markets to record highs. Many midterm winners campaigned on slowing such projects, and Sen. Bernie Sanders has called for a national moratorium on data-center construction.
“The blood is in the streets, folks,” said Neil Wilson of Saxo Markets. “The fear is a total momentum unwind as Democrats pace the frontier and kibosh data centre buildout… this looks totally overdone but the nature of sell-everything of this market means we need to look for some stability first.”
Michael Hewson of MCH Market Insights said the Texas results added a specific worry: that politicians there might target Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX over his support for President Donald Trump.
JBizNews Desk | Tokyo
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