ASIA MARKET OPEN | KOSPI Sinks 8.55% After Circuit Breaker Halt; Taiwan Stocks Open 6.4% Lower

According to Kabutan, Yonhap and HKET, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 opened down 703.55 points at 60,374.35 on Friday, extending its losing streak to a fifth session, while the TOPIX fell 61.27 points to 3,879.12. Losses deepened after the open, with the Nikkei at 57,201, down 3,876 points, as of 10 a.m. Tokyo time. A tech sell-off on Wall Street weighed on Japanese AI and chip-related shares, with Advantest and Fujikura among the decliners. The yen traded around 157.50 per dollar, firmer than the previous evening. Seoul's KOSPI opened down 120.54 points at 5,263.26. The Korea Exchange activated a circuit breaker at 9:03 a.m. local time, halting trading for 20 minutes after the index fell more than 8% from the previous close, the tenth such activation this year. As of 9:25 a.m. local time, the KOSPI was down 460.33 points, or 8.55%, at 4,923.47. Samsung Electronics fell 9.98% and SK hynix dropped 11.63%. The KOSDAQ opened down 23.98 points at 654.43. Investors were concerned that the Democrats' sweeping victory in the U.S. midterms could slow the build-out of AI data centers. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index opened down 392 points at 24,404 on turnover of HK$4.28 billion, while the Hang Seng Tech Index fell 3.1% to 4,025. Alibaba fell more than 3%, Lenovo extended losses by more than 9% and SMIC dropped more than 6%, while PetroChina rose more than 1%. Taiwan's TAIEX opened at 38,915.76, down 2,658.96 points, or about 6.40%, and fell as low as 37,837.05, down 3,737.67 points, or 8.99%. TSMC fell NT$215, or 9.6%, to NT$2,025, MediaTek lost NT$345 to NT$3,115 and Hon Hai declined NT$22 to NT$213. In mainland China, all four major A-share indexes opened lower: the Shanghai Composite fell 2.11%, the Shenzhen Component 3.72%, the ChiNext Index 4.99% and the STAR Market Composite 5.33%. More than 5,400 stocks declined.