Asian stocks fell on Friday morning, following a decline in US stocks that saw Wall Street close out its worst quarter since the start of the pandemic.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index lost 2 per cent in early trading, while Japan’s Topix and South Korea’s Kospi shed as much as 1.3 per cent and 1 per cent, respectively. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was broadly flat.
The Hang Seng Tech index, which tracks Hong Kong-listed Chinese technology companies, fell 3 per cent, having closed 1.4 per cent lower on Thursday.
The moves followed declines on Wall Street driven by growing pessimism over peace talks in Ukraine, high levels of inflation and the expectation of several rates increases this year.
Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 closed down 1.6 per cent, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 1.5 per cent. That took the indices’ losses for the year to 4.9 per cent and 9.1 per cent, respectively, for their worst quarterly performances in two years.
Brent crude, the international benchmark, dropped 0.4 per cent to trade at $104.34 a barrel on Friday, while US marker West Texas Intermediate fell 0.5 per cent to $99.84. Oil dropped sharply on Thursday when the White House announced a “historic release” of about 180mn barrels from the US emergency stockpile in a bid to cool prices.
The yield on the US 10-year Treasury note, which moves inversely to price, gained 0.06 percentage points, rising to 2.38 per cent. The yield on the two-year note added 0.08 percentage points to hit just under 2.37 per cent.
