Tourists visit the Nanjing Road Scenic Area in Shanghai, China, on October 20, 2025.
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Asia-Pacific markets slid Friday, tracking losses on Wall Street as technology stocks continued to come under pressure and Fed rate-cut doubts swirled.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index lost 1.85%, while the Topix slid 1.03%. South Korea’s Kospi fell 2.29% and the small-cap Kosdaq was 1.42% lower.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 1.58%.
Futures for Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index pointed to a lower open, trading at 26,701, against the index’s previous close of 27,073.03.
China will release data on retail sales, industrial output, and fixed-asset investment for October today. Fixed-asset investment, which includes real estate, fell unexpectedly by 0.5% in September.
Overnight in the U.S., all three major averages closed lower as investors continued to sell shares of technology companies, especially those in the artificial intelligence trade, amid worries about their valuations.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 797.60 points, or 1.65%, to settle at 47,457.22, well off the record highs set in the previous session. The S&P 500 shed 1.66% to finish at 6,737.49.
The broad-based index saw notable declines in the information technology and communication services sectors, led by Disney, which fell nearly 8% on mixed results for its fiscal fourth quarter. The Nasdaq Composite pulled back 2.29% to close at 22,870.36. All three major averages, as well as the small-cap Russell 2000 index, suffered their worst day since Oct. 10.
Recent remarks from Fed chair Jerome Powell’s colleagues point to plenty of apprehension over whether the central bank should deliver its third consecutive easing of policy when it meets Dec. 9-10.
“Given my baseline outlook, it will likely be appropriate to keep policy rates at the current level for some time to balance the inflation and employment risks in this highly uncertain environment,” Boston Fed President Susan Collins recently said.
As a result, markets have recalibrated their expectations. Whereas traders as recently as a few days ago were pricing in at least a 2-to-1 probability of a quarter percentage point cut, that’s now flipped to a coin toss, according to futures markets readings tabulated by the CME Group in its FedWatch tool.
— CNBC’s Jeff Cox, Sean Conlon and Pia Singh contributed to this report.