Investing.com– Most Asian stocks retreated on Wednesday with technology-heavy indexes falling in anticipation of earnings from market darling Nvidia, while Australian stocks sank on a sticky inflation print.
Persistent concerns over China also kept sentiment towards Asia on edge, after Canada said it will impose steep trade tariffs on the region’s biggest economy.
Regional markets took middling cues from Wall Street, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 crept higher to record highs. But the NASDAQ Composite lagged amid some caution before Nvidia’s earnings. Expectations of rate cuts also spurred a pivot out of technology and into more economically sensitive sectors.
U.S. stock index futures fell in Asian trade.
Asia tech retreats, Nvidia earnings awaited
Tech-heavy Asian bourses retreated on Wednesday, with chipmaking stocks skittish ahead of earnings from NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA).
South Korea’s KOSPI fell 0.5%, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng indexes lost about 0.3% and 0.8%, respectively.
Focus will be squarely on whether Nvidia continued to benefit from strong demand for artificial intelligence- a trend that saw the stock surge nearly 160% in value so far in 2024.
Nvidia is considered as a bellwether for the AI industry, with any takeaways from its earnings, due later on Wednesday, likely to factor into Asian technology stocks.
Stocks with direct exposure to Nvidia were a mixed bag. Taiwan’s TSMC (TW:2330) (NYSE:TSM) was flat in Taipei trade, while Japanese semiconductor testing equipment maker Advantest Corp. (TYO:6857) surged nearly 3%.
