Asia markets traded lower on Friday following sharp declines in U.S. stocks overnight as a dire quarterly warning from Apple stoked fears of a slowdown in the global economy.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 3.27 percent in morning trade while the Topix index fell 2.3 percent, with almost all sectors seeing declines. Japanese conglomerate Softbank fell 5.23 percent and Fast Retailing, the company behind the Uniqlo chain of apparel stores, declined 6.21 percent. Stocks in Japan were closed on Wednesday and Thursday for public holidays.
South Korea’s Kospi slipped about 0.1 percent.
Stocks in Australia also fell, with the benchmark ASX 200 down 0.89 percent as many sectors saw losses.
The heavily-weighted financial subindex declined 0.79 percent along with shares of the country’s so-called Big Four banks; Australia and New Zealand Banking Group slipped 0.66 percent, Commonwealth Bank of Australia shed 0.6 percent, Westpac fell 0.4 percent and National Australia Bank declined by 0.21 percent.
Chinese mainland markets also fell after market open while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index beat the downward trend to trade up 0.1 percent.
“For the brave, now would be a good time to be looking at … some of these markets,” Stefan Hofer, a managing director and chief investment strategist at LGT Bank Asia, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday. Hofer added that liquidity and trading volumes are “still quite thin at the outset of the year.”
“Fundamentally speaking, I think if we do have a trade deal with China, let’s say, by the middle of 2019, then Asia … will be the place to be in terms of equities,” he said, adding that the ongoing U.S.-China trade war has been “the major overhang that has been a problem” for Asian markets.
In market action overnight on Wall Street, stocks sold off amid fears of a slowing global economy and weaker-than-expected reading on U.S. manufacturing.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 660.02 points, or 2.8 percent, to close at 22,686.22. At its session low, the Dow fell more than 700 points. The S&P 500 shed 2.47 percent to finish at 2,447.89 while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 3 percent to close at 6,463.50.
The market sell-off was led by Apple, which saw its stock plunge almost 10 percent after cutting its revenue guidance on Wednesday —its worst session since 2013. The iPhone maker attributed most of the predicted revenue shortfall for struggling business in China.
The decline in stocks stateside was accelerated by a weaker-than-expected reading on the U.S. manufacturing sector. ISM’s manufacturing index fell to 54.1 in December, economists polled by Refinitiv expected 57.9. The data came days after China reported a decline in its factory activity for December.
Disappointing economic data from the world’s two largest economies come at a time when officials from the U.S. and China are attempting to strike a deal on trade, after placing a series of punitive tariffs on each other’s goods.
The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was at 96.305 after seeing a high above 96.8 earlier in the week.
The Japanese yen, widely viewed as a safe-haven currency, traded at 107.66 against the dollar after rising sharply on Thursday to levels below 106. The Australian dollar was at $0.6994.
— CNBC’s Fred Imbert contributed to this report.
