Asia Markets

Asia-Pacific markets mostly fall on penultimate day of the year

Key Points
  • Investors are assessing China's military exercises around Taiwan, after the world's second-largest economy announced new drills surrounding the island Monday.
  • Shares of SoftBank fell after it announced a $4 billion deal late Monday to buy data center investment firm DigitalBridge.
Aerial view by drone of Tokyo Cityscape with Tokyo Sky Tree visible in Tokyo city, Japan on sunrise.
pongnathee kluaythong | Moment | Getty Images

Asia-Pacific markets mostly fell Tuesday, after the tech sell-down on Wall Street continued on AI bubble fears.

Nvidia shares dropped more than 1% Monday stateside, giving back some of its more than 5% gain in last week's period. Palantir Technologies and Meta Platforms also suffered losses, as did Oracle.


Japan's Nikkei 225 was down 0.37% to 50,339.48, while the broad-based Topix was 0.51% lower and ended at 3,408.97.

Shares of Softbank Group Corp slipped almost 2%, after the company announced a deal late Monday to buy data center investment firm DigitalBridge for $4 billion as part of its artificial intelligence push.

SoftBank CEO and Chairman Masayoshi Son said the acquisition "will strengthen the foundation for next-generation AI data centers" and advance the firm's vision to become a leading "Artificial Super Intelligence" platform provider. Shares of DigitalBridge jumped about 10% after the announcement.

South Korea's Kospi shed 0.15% and closed at 4,214.17, while the small-cap Kosdaq declined 0.76% to 925.47, leading losses in Asia.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng index bucked the trend and rose 0.86% in the final hour of trade, while the CSI 300 in mainland China was 0.26% higher and ended at 4,651.28.

Investors are assessing China's military exercises around Taiwan, after the world's second-largest economy announced new drills surrounding the island Monday.

Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te said that Taiwan will "act responsibly and not escalate conflict," but also said that the "frequent escalation of military pressure" by China was not something a responsible power should do.

The Taiwan Weighted Index fell 0.36% and finished at 28,707.13, with major tech names like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Hon Hai falling about 0.65% and 1.3% respectively.

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.1% to 8,717.1, after registering gains earlier in the day.

U.S. futures were little changed in early Asian hours.

Overnight in the U.S., the S&P 500 dropped 0.35%, while the Nasdaq Composite shed 0.50%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average pulled back by 0.51%.

Traders will be looking for home price data due Tuesday stateside at 9 a.m. ET, and the Federal Reserve's December meeting minutes at 2 p.m. ET.

—CNBC's Sean Conlon and Fred Imbert contributed to this report.

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