Asia-Pacific Stocks Fall Across the Board on Tuesday; Korean Equities Plunge Over 3.6% as SK Hynix Drops 7%
nashnova research
Asia-Pacific equities sold off Tuesday, with Korea's KOSPI leading the decline at over 3.6% and SK Hynix plunging more than 7% — doubts over AI capital-spending sustainability overrode Wall Street's overnight tech rebound.
Why did Korea take the hardest hit?
KOSPI tumbled over 3.6% on the day. The MSCI Asia-Pacific index fell roughly 1%, with declining stocks outnumbering advancers about three to one.
SK Hynix plunged more than 7%, nearing its lowest level since April; Samsung Electronics dropped over 3%. This means → doubts about AI chip demand are landing hardest on memory chips — the most upstream, most exposed link.
Korean AI-cloud firm Elice Group listed on KOSDAQ the same day, opening at 75,700 won — roughly 16% below its IPO price — and falling as much as 32% intraday. In plain terms = Korea's largest IPO this year broke on day one, amplifying the panic.
Why did Japan's AI hardware chain buckle too?
The Nikkei 225 fell roughly 1% to 1.28%; the Topix slid about 0.9%.
AI hardware and data-center names led declines: packaging-material leader Resonac Holdings dropped 6.43%, fiber-optic supplier Fujikura fell 6.34%, SoftBank Group slid 6.34%, and Furukawa Electric lost 5.42%.
Semiconductor-wafer maker Sumco declined 4.79%; chip-equipment maker Ebara fell 4.12%. This reflects a sell-off travelling the entire chain — AI buildout → data centers → chips → materials → equipment — not a single-name story.
How do U.S. Treasury yields and French politics factor in?
The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield held near 5.13%, after climbing 6 basis points the prior session. Australia's 10-year yield rose a further 5 bps to 5.28%. This means → the high-yield environment keeps raising the cost of a risk-asset rebound.
Weekend cost-of-living protests in France escalated into unrest; French government bonds sold off and European assets came under pressure. Pepperstone head of research Chris Weston said: "Markets are happy to cover shorts and unwind defensive trades, but that is very different from rebuilding aggressive AI exposure."
In plain terms = investors are willing to stop betting against the market, but that does not mean they are ready to buy back in heavily.
What comes next?
About 70 S&P 500 companies report earnings this week; results from Meta Platforms and other tech giants are in the spotlight. UBS's Mark Haefele said the reports will test whether strong profit growth can rebuild confidence in a stock-market rally.
Goldman Sachs data show Meta is one of five AI hyperscale data-center operators whose combined capex is projected at roughly $1.2 trillion next year. This means → the market needs to see profits keeping pace with that astronomical spending, or the "spend now, grow later" narrative starts to crack.
BNP Paribas Asset Management chief market strategist Daniel Morris noted that global tech-hardware earnings are forecast to double year-on-year, with emerging-market growth reaching twice that rate — expectations are already elevated, making earnings season the key test for whether Asia-Pacific tech stocks can find a floor.
How did other assets move?
Gold fell roughly 0.34% to 0.51%, trading around $4,119–$4,126 per ounce.
Brent crude edged up about 0.21% to 0.27%, at roughly $109.78–$109.84 per barrel.
Bitcoin slipped about 0.5% to 0.67%, near $81,386–$81,543. The dollar index traded sideways around 102; the euro ticked up slightly, but Generali Investments head of macro and market research Thomas Hempell said the Iran standoff and unresolved French politics make a near-term euro rebound unlikely.
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