It’s looking really rough out there with Asian stocks once again being taken to the cleaners. All eyes are on South Korea as tech shares continue to be battered amid the AI boom and bust cycle. At the lows just now, the KOSPI sank by over 12% and leads the rout in recent weeks to effectively wipe out the gains from April to June.
From earlier: South Korea has just experienced something worse than the dot-com bust
The amount of leverage involved will serve as good lessons for the future and it’s going to be quite a big wake up call for the new age of degen traders thinking that the stock market only moves in one direction. There will be many stories to come out from the great selloff here but for long-term investors, there will be good opportunities too.
Looking elsewhere in Asia, the Nikkei is down roughly 3% and the TAIEX is down some 4% on the day. The declines are not as profound but it speaks to a broader negative mood across the region, not just in South Korea.
And that is also lending a more nervous mood as we look towards European trading later.
While not being all too tech-heavy, European futures are also pointing lower with DAX futures down 0.7% and CAC 40 futures down 0.6% on the day. It’s a case of when sh*t hits the fan, it goes everywhere.
And the mood music is also not helped by the continued selloff in US tech shares after the nervous struggle from recent weeks. That culminated with another big selloff last week as investors were hit by Google posting its first ever quarter with negative free cash flow as a public company.
S&P 500 futures are down 0.2% and Nasdaq futures down 0.6% currently. And today is going to be a big day with a series of challenges set to test the market.
Besides US-Iran headlines, there is also the FOMC meeting to deal with later on in the day. However, the main focus will come after the closing bell with both Microsoft and Meta set to report earnings. After Google’s setback last week, all eyes will be on whether we will see the same from the other two big hyperscalers this week.
