Asian stocks tumbled for the fourth week, posting their biggest drop in 17 years as a deepening US housing slump and spreading credit crunch cooled investor demand for equities. BHP Billiton Ltd and Toyota Motor Corp fell.
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc paced a slide among lenders after reporting losses related to US subprime loans. Rams Home Loans Group Ltd plunged after the Australian company failed to refinance short-term US loans.
"It's not clear how long the subprime turmoil will continue so financial shares will be sold until this problem is solved completely," said Yasuhiko Hirakawa, who helps manage the equivalent of US$80 billion at DLIBJ Asset Management Co in Tokyo.
PHOTO: AFP
The Morgan Stanley Capital International Asia-Pacific Index lost 8 percent to 137.14, erasing this year's gain. All of the MSCI's 10 industry groups fell, with the measure of materials producers that includes BHP posting the largest decline.
Indonesia's Jakarta Composite Index posted the biggest drop among the region's stocks benchmarks, losing 14 percent.
Heavy selling in Tokyo quickly spread across the entire region with major markets down more than 5 percent as investors scrambled to exit the market fearing further heavy losses.
Jakarta was closed for a public holiday.
TAIPEI
Taiwanese share prices closed at three-month lows, down 1.35 percent, as a continued sell-off on regional bourses led an early technical bounce on the local market to fizzle out.
Dealers said financial stocks led a rebound early in the session as the sector was among the hardest hit in the recent slump caused by worries over the US subprime-mortgage situation.
But tumbles in regional markets aggravated margin calls locally, leading to a downswing by midmorning
The approach of Typhoon Sepat also caused investors to take a cautious stance ahead of the weekend, after warnings of strong winds and torrential rains.
The weighted index closed down 111.08 points at 8,090.29. Turnover was at NT$178.43 billion (US$5.39 billion).
TOKYO
Japanese share prices plummeted more than 5 percent, suffering the biggest one-day point drop since April 2000 as US housing worries battered Asian markets.
Dealers said investors dumped stocks as they rushed to safe havens such as bonds to escape the escalating fallout from problems in credit markets, with even traditional market favorites such as Toyota Motor slumping over seven percent.
The NIKKEI-225 index tumbled 874.81 points or 5.42 percent to end at 15,273.68. Turnover rose to 2.94 billion shares from 2.68 billion shares on Thursday.
"Market sentiment is a disaster," said Ryuta Otsuka, head of research at Toyo Securities.
The dramatic drop was "as bad as when the dot-com bubble burst" in 2000, he said.
HONG KONG
Share prices closed 1.4 percent lower, reversing earlier sharp losses of 6 percent, as bargain hunting helped the market to narrow its losses.
Dealers said sharp falls on Japanese and South Korean bourses and continued volatility on Wall Street drove the index below 20,000 points in the afternoon before late buying helped it regain the key psychological level.
The Hang Seng Index closed down 285.26 points at 20,387.13.
SHANGHAI
Chinese share prices closed 2.28 percent lower amid continued concerns over sharp falls in the regional markets triggered by the US credit crunch. The Shanghai Composite Index closed down 108.87 points to 4,656.57.
SINGAPORE
Share prices closed 0.68 percent lower after staging a dramatic rebound from steep declines sparked by credit crunch fears due to a crisis in the US subprime housing market.
The Straits Times Index fell 21.45 points to 3,130.71, clawing back after falling by as much as 6.03 percent to narrow down losses.
SYDNEY
Australian share prices closed down 0.7 percent as uncertainty over the crisis in US subprime home loans continued to worry the market.
The S&P/ASX 200 shed 40.5 points to 5,671.0.
MUMBAI
Indian share prices pared steep intraday losses to close down 1.51 percent but fears persisted about a widening impact of the US housing loan problem.
Dealers said the markets slid as much as 4.02 percent intraday to breach the 14,000-point level before retracing on bargain-hunting.
The 30-share SENSEX index closed down 216.69 at 14,141.52.
SEOUL
South Korean share prices closed 3.1 percent lower amid continuing jitters following Thursday's unprecedented crash and massive sell-off around the region.
The KOSPI index slumped 53.91 points to 1,638.07.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”