Lisa Su, chair and chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices Inc., displays an AMD Instinct MI455X GPU during the 2026 CES event in Las Vegas, Jan. 5, 2026.
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South Korea markets led declines in Asia-Pacific Thursday, tracking Wall Street losses as the tech sell-off gained momentum.
Seoul’s Kospi index tumbled 3.86% to 5,163.57, leading losses in Asia, as chip heavyweights Samsung and SK Hynix fell 5.8% and 6.44%, respectively.
Other top losers included defense giant Hanwha Aerospace, which declined 7.33%. The small-cap Kosdaq was down 3.57% to 1,108.41.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.88%, closing at 53,818.04 and retreating from a record high. Investment firm SoftBank Group Corp declined over 7% after chip designer Arm’s fiscal third-quarter licensing sales missed estimates.
However, Japanese electronics manufacturer Panasonic jumped 8.41%, even as the company reported worse revenue and net profit numbers for its fiscal third quarter ended December.
Adjusted operating profit, however, increased to 159.1 billion yen ($1.03 billion), a 5.59% gain from the same period a year before. The adjusted operating profit strips out restructuring costs of 129.3 billion yen.
The broad-based Topix reversed gains after being the only index in positive territory earlier, falling marginally to 3,652.41 and also coming off a record high.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 0.14% to 26,885.24, while the mainland Chinese CSI 300 was down 0.6%, closing at 4,670.42. Both indexes were dragged by basic materials stocks.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was down 0.43%, closing at 8,889.2.
Overnight in the U.S., the S&P 500 slid 0.51% for back-to-back losses, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.53%, and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.51%.
Notably, Advanced Micro Devices plunged 17% after its first-quarter forecast underwhelmed some analysts. Broadcom and Micron Technology also suffered major losses, falling about down 3.8%, while the latter fell 9.5%.
Bitcoin declined more than 3%, hovering just above the $73,000 level, after falling below that mark earlier.
—CNBC’s Sean Conlon and Pia Singh contributed to this report.
