Tech shares drop hard in USA and Asia due to recent worrying reports

Ioana Erdei 20/11/2018 | 13:28

Tech giants’s shares dropped on Tuesday, following a sharp overnight sell-off in stocks such as Facebook, Apple and Amazon on Wall Street. Apple lost share value because of Wall Street Journal’s report that Apple has slashed orders for its iPhone models, CNBC writes.

In Taiwan, contract manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision, known as Foxconn, fell 3.27 percent on the day while iPhone assembler Pegatron declined 1.71 percent.

Over in Japan, shares of electronic parts maker TDK slipped by 1.92 percent while component supplier Murata Manufacturing declined by 3.53 percent.

FAANG shares enter bear market

On Wall Street, the so-called FAANG stocks — Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google-parent Alphabet — all closed in bear market territory on Monday. Those stocks had already fallen steadily over the last 6 weeks as the companies delivered disappointing earnings and mixed forecasts. Wall Street defines a bear market as a fall of 20 percent or more from a stock’s 52-week high.

In Japan, shares of conglomerate Softbank declined by 4.83 percent while Nintendo dropped 5.68 percent.

South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix also fell on the back of a report from the Financial Times that Chinese authorities have alleged “massive evidence” of antitrust violations by the two chipmakers and Micron Technology. The report also said China would deepen its investigation into the three companies, which are the largest memory-chip manufacturers in the world.

On Tuesday, Samsung’s stock declined by 1.95 percent while SK Hynix saw losses of 3.30 percent.

In Hong Kong, shares of Chinese tech behemoth Tencent fell 3.30 percent. Electronics maker Xiaomi bucked the trend — its stock surged 8.38 percent after the company reported that it had swung to a net profit in the third quarter.