World markets bleed as global growth, US earnings fears spook markets
Asian shares tumble and Wall Street suffers the worst one-day fall since 2011
Sydney — Asian shares plunged on Thursday as hundreds of billions of dollars haemorrhaged from global markets after a rout in tech stocks inflicted the largest daily decline on Wall Street since 2011, wiping out all its gains for the year. Stock investors have become increasingly nervous about lofty equities valuations, a likely peak in corporate earnings momentum, faster rate hikes in the US and an ongoing Sino-US trade war that threatens to hurt world growth. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan has fallen more than 18.5% so far this year after skidding almost 2% on Thursday. Japan’s Nikkei tumbled 3.3% to a six-month trough while Australian shares hit a more than one-year low. Tokyo’s Topix index tumbled 3%, evaporating more than $155bn in market value. Chinese shares were in the red too with the blue-chip SSE Composite index plummeting 2.5% as fresh market-support measures by the Chinese government failed to ease investor worries about high leverage and the...
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