Equities plummet as tech sell-off continues

Asian equities plummeted on Thursday, mirroring Wall Street's overnight meltdown caused by the sector's disproportionate losses due to poor results from large technology companies.

Additionally, there was still a negative attitude towards China, as seen by the benchmark stocks testing their lowest points since February.

Overnight trading saw a sharp decline in Wall Street indices, with the NASDAQ falling more than 3% after lacklustre results from Tesla and Alphabet ignited a prolonged tech meltdown.

However, there was a little increase in U.S. stock index futures during Asian trading, indicating that Wall Street could be recovering from its recent losses. The US GDP and PCE price index figures that are scheduled to be released in the next few days were also emphasised.

Asia's tech-heavy stock exchanges had the worst performances on Thursday, with South Korea's KOSPI down 1.8% and Japan's Nikkei 225 falling 2.7%. Weaker-than-expected gross domestic product numbers for the second quarter also hurt the KOSPI.

The losses in their American counterparts caused Chinese internet titans to cause a 1.8% decline in Hong Kong's Hang Seng index.

Even though the company's quarterly results were above expectations, Alphabet made headlines with these losses. But worries about other tech profits mirroring similar patterns were stoked by indications of declining advertising income and rising spending, particularly on AI.

After a significant market meltdown over the previous year, profit-taking had battered the IT sector, which was already suffering heavy losses over the previous week. A shift towards more economically vulnerable industries was also spurred by expectations of interest rate reductions, particularly in the United States.

Due to a smaller weighting of tech stocks in both indices, China's indexes declined far more gradually than those of their Asian counterparts. They were, however, both down about 0.7% and at their lowest points since late February.

With attitude towards the country hammered by a slew of negative economic reports, Chinese markets were suffering severe losses. In the second quarter, the Chinese economy increased less than anticipated.

Unexpected reductions in the nation's interest rates also had minimal effect on mood. According to reports on Thursday, a number of Chinese state-owned banks have cut borrowing charges as a result of this week's unexpected decrease in the loan prime rate.

(Sources: investing.com, reuters.com)