Asian markets suffer fresh beating as global rout resumes

February 11, 2018 | 21:15

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Asian trading floors were a sea of red once again on Friday (Feb 9) as the global rout returned with a vengeance on intensifying fears about tighter US interest rates.

asian markets suffer fresh beating as global rout resumes

Asian markets fell deep into the red again this week after another pummelling for stocks on Wall Street, fuelled by worries over rising interest rates AFP/GREG WOOD

Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai were among the worst hit as they each plunged more than three per cent, while investors piled into safe haven assets such as gold and the yen.

The sell-off followed another battering for Wall Street, where the Dow suffered its second-heaviest daily points fall on record - the worst coming on Monday - after key US Treasury bond yields spiked fuelling the prospect of higher borrowing costs.

After a blistering 2017 and January, markets worldwide have gone into a spasm in the past two weeks on fears that the booming global economy and rising inflation will lead to higher interest rates.

"There's some big-money players that have really leveraged to the low rates forever, and they have to unwind those trades," Doug Cote, chief market strategist at Voya Investment Management, told Bloomberg News. "They could be in full panic mode right now."

Japan's Nikkei is now at levels not seen since mid-October, Hong Kong is on course to wipe out its 2018 gains and Shanghai is around a seven-month trough.

Elsewhere Sydney fell 1.3 per cent, Singapore shed 1.6 per cent and Seoul was more than two per cent off. Wellington, Manila and Taipei were also being battered.

A key trigger of the recent pullback was last Friday's strong US jobs report that also showed rising US wage growth, fuelling speculation the Federal Reserve will lift rates more than the three times already expected this year.

However, many analysts are upbeat about the future owing to healthy economic conditions in the US and global economies as well as the positive outlook for corporate earnings after Donald Trump's massive tax cuts in December.