Asian shares buckle on Saudi anxieties as Italy sticks to its budget
Asian shares outside of Japan fall 2%, while European shares are seen falling 0.5% to 0.8% at the open
Tokyo — Asian shares slumped on Tuesday as a cocktail of negative drivers from Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic isolation to fresh worries about trade wars whacked sentiment across the region. Selling in Asia erased gains made in the rally of the previous two sessions, which were led by China stimulus hopes, with the MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan dropping 2.2%. Declines in many regional benchmark indices also exceeded 2%. European shares are likely to come under pressure with France’s CAC 40 and Germany’s DAX 30 set to pierce their 2018 lows. Spread-betters see the CAC 40 falling 0.6% and the DAX 30 0.9%. Britain’s FTSE is seen as falling 0.5%. South Korea’s Kospi and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng both fell 3% while Japan’s Nikkei lost 2.7%. MSCI’s index for the region, including Japan, hit the lowest level since May 2017. “We’ve got a few negative factors when market sentiment was already fragile,” said Hiroyuki Ueno, senior strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset M...
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