Asia-Pacific stocks were broadly lower Tuesday after tech shares fell sharply in the U.S. overnight due to concerns about whether Facebook Inc. did enough to stop improper access and handling of user data.
The Nikkei Stock Average NIK, -0.51% had fallen 1% by the end of morning trading, while Australia’s S&P ASX 200 XJO, -0.44% was down 0.6%. Taiwan’s Taiex Y9999, -0.38% fell 0.4% and so did South Korea’s Kospi SEU, -0.13% , as index heavyweight Samsung Electronics 005930, -0.20% dropped 0.7%.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index HSI, -0.54% fell 1%, while a gauge of Chinese companies with listings in the city sank 1.4%.
News events were creating opportunities for investors to find bargains, said Jack Siu, investment strategist for Asia-Pacific at Credit Suisse, who also flagged a looming Federal Open Market Committee meeting where the Fed is widely expected to raise U.S. interest rates.
“We think the market will remain volatile in the next few days because of the news flow, not only the technology sector but also the FOMC meeting and the possibility of tariffs between the U.S. and China,” he said. “We think this is an opportunity to buy,” he added, saying he was recommending clients buy stocks in Europe, China and Korea, especially tech and financial stocks.
The tech sector was in turmoil in the U.S. overnight.
Facebook FB, -6.77% shares plummeted 6.7% and slid another 1.5% in after-hours trading after investors learned Cambridge Analytica, a firm that helped President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign, had collected and used without permission data from the accounts of millions of users. Cambridge Analytica has said it complied with Facebook’s rules.
The Nasdaq Composite COMP, -1.84% fell 1.8%, and the S&P 500 SPX, -1.42% declined 1.4%.
Among Chinese tech shares with U.S. listings, Baidu Inc. BIDU, -3.64% shares fell 3.6% Monday, leading declines. Uber suspended its self-driving car program Monday after the first known fatality from an autonomous vehicle. Baidu is among the companies attempting to bring the technology to China. Largan Precision 3008, -3.64% , a Taiwan-listed maker of camera equipment that sells lenses used by self-driving automobiles, fell 3.5% Tuesday.
Funds tracking the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, which gives a 27% weighting to technology companies — many of them in China, South Korea and Taiwan — also sold off Monday.
Short sellers trading tech stocks including Facebook, Apple Inc. AAPL, -1.53% , Amazon.com Inc AMZN, -1.70% , Netflix Inc. NFLX, -1.56% and Alphabet Inc.’s GOOGL, -3.03% Google made mark-to-market profits of $980 million from Monday’s declines, wrote Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director for predictive analytics at S3 Partners. The size of the stocks in market benchmarks could magnify broader selling.
“With so many of these stocks in passive investment vehicles such as ETFs and funds, these stocks are prone to accelerated negative returns” after significant market downturns, he wrote.
Bond markets and currencies were broadly unchanged. The yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury note was last up 0.01% at 2.8573%, while the ICE U.S. Dollar Index, which tracks the dollar’s strength against a basket of six major currencies, was up 0.1%. The dollar JPYUSD, -0.204116% last bought ¥106.1820.
