Asian stocks crumble on Wall Street sell-off

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Asian stocks crumble on Wall Street sell-off
By V. Phani Kumar, MarketWatch
Last update: 8:54 p.m. EST Jan. 6, 2008
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HONG KONG (MarketWatch) -- Asian markets dropped Monday after Wall Street reacted to concerns of a U.S. recession, with Australian, Singaporean and Taiwanese stocks suffering heavy losses, while Japanese stocks recovered some of their early losses on bargain buying in exporters such as Canon Inc. and Sony Corp.
Chart of JP:1804610
In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 average declined 0.4% to 14,637.73, after earlier hitting its lowest level since July 2006 at 14,438.61. The index sank 4% during a shortened session Friday. The broader Topix index fell 0.4% to 1,406.13.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 lost 2% at 6,182.20, New Zealand's NZX 50 index gave up 1.2% at 3,961.01 and South Korea's Kospi lost 1.6% at 1,834.03.
China's Shanghai Composite slipped 0.2% to 5,348.93 and Singapore's Straits Times Index shed 1.7% to 3,379.67, while Taiwan's Weighted index tumbled 2.8% to 7,992.32.
Participants in Hong Kong expected the local market to open lower, but not be much affected by the Wall Street decline.
"I think the Hang Seng will fall, but it won't fall like a rock. It won't crash a 1,000 points and it might recover its early losses during the day," said Francis Lun, general manager at Fulbright Securities.
Lun said the recovery in the Nikkei average from the day's low, as well as the weak economic data released by the U.S. Friday being in line with local market expectations as reasons for the likely recovery.