Asia Markets

South Korea's Kospi leads declines in Asia, tracking Wall Street tech sell-off; Topix retreats from record

Key Points
  • South Korea's Kospi tumbled and led losses in Asia, dragged by chip stocks.
  • Softbank Group Corp lost more than 6% after Arm results missed estimates.
  • Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index reversed into positive territory, the only index to do so.
Lisa Su, chair and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, displays an AMD Instinct MI455X GPU during CES in Las Vegas, Jan. 5, 2026.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

South Korea markets led declines in Asia-Pacific Thursday, tracking Wall Street losses as the tech sell-off gained momentum.

Seoul's Kospi index tumbled 3.86% to 5,163.57, leading losses in Asia, as chip heavyweights Samsung and SK Hynix fell 5.8% and 6.44%, respectively.

Other top losers included defense giant Hanwha Aerospace, which declined 7.33%. The small-cap Kosdaq was down 3.57% to 1,108.41.


Japan's Nikkei 225 was down 0.88%, closing at 53,818.04 and retreating from a record high. Investment firm SoftBank Group Corp declined over 7% after chip designer Arm's fiscal third-quarter licensing sales missed estimates.

However, Japanese electronics manufacturer Panasonic jumped 8.41%, even as the company reported worse revenue and net profit numbers for its fiscal third quarter ended December.

Adjusted operating profit, however, increased to 159.1 billion yen ($1.03 billion), a 5.59% gain from the same period a year before. The adjusted operating profit strips out restructuring costs of 129.3 billion yen.

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The broad-based Topix reversed gains after being the only index in positive territory earlier, falling marginally to 3,652.41 and also coming off a record high.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng index rose 0.14% to 26,885.24, while the mainland Chinese CSI 300 was down 0.6%, closing at 4,670.42. Both indexes were dragged by basic materials stocks.

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was down 0.43%, closing at 8,889.2.

Overnight in the U.S., the S&P 500 slid 0.51% for back-to-back losses, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.53%, and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.51%.

Notably, Advanced Micro Devices plunged 17% after its first-quarter forecast underwhelmed some analysts. Broadcom and Micron Technology also suffered major losses, falling about down 3.8%, while the latter fell 9.5%.

Bitcoin declined more than 3%, hovering just above the $73,000 level, after falling below that mark earlier.

—CNBC's Sean Conlon and Pia Singh contributed to this report.

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