A wave of selling in semiconductor shares caused most Asian stock markets to plummet on Thursday, while European bourses had a muted start and Wall Street appeared destined to open lower before the release of important US employment data.
The decline was concentrated in the technology sector, where investors withdrew from the chip stocks that have fueled a large portion of this year’s surge due to mounting concerns that the enormous sums of money Big Tech is investing in AI could cause the market to become oversupplied.
The worst of it was felt in Kospi, South Korea, which fell over 5% as its powerful chipmakers declined. Samsung Electronics dropped more than 6%, while memory specialist SK Hynix lost nearly 8%. In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 fell nearly 1.5%, with chip-equipment producer Tokyo Electron down roughly 5.6%, while Taiwan’s Taiex slipped 1.1% as TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, gave up 1.8%.The developments stand in direct contrast to a fantastic year for Asian tech, with the Kospi and the Nikkei still up around 85% and 34% respectively in 2026.
Conversely, India’s Sensex increased by 0.5%, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng increased by roughly 0.8%, helped by an 8.7% increase in BYD, an electric vehicle manufacturer that announced a second consecutive monthly increase in sales. In Europe, markets opened flat as both the Euro Stoxx 50 and the broader pan-European Stoxx 600 traded inside a 1% range at the start of Thursday’s session.
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