Asian shares slipped in early trade on October 22 as investors weighed strong tech earnings against concerns over AI spending, Fed policy and Gulf tensions. MSCI's broadest Asia-Pacific index excluding Japan fell 0.2%, on track for a fourth straight weekly decline, while Japan's Nikkei dropped 0.4% and South Korean shares lost more than 1%. Wall Street rose overnight after better-than-expected results from Meta, SpaceX and Super Micro, but Meta's plan to issue non-voting Class C stock drew renewed scrutiny on AI spending. The 10-year Treasury yield fell 4.2 basis points to 5.1065%, while Brent crude rose 1.1% to US$110.03 a barrel, near a five-month high. The US ordered diplomats to leave Saudi Arabia after Houthi strikes.
Summary written by Upside AI from the original article. Read the source for full details.
Read the original on straitstimes.com ↗
Keywords
AsiaAI investmentFedgeopolitics
Open a keyword to see other news on the same topic.
Related tickers and likely impact
XAU/USD
▲ Likely positiveRelevance: low
| Market | Gold |
|---|---|
| Close on 10/21/2026 | 4,141.17 |
| Change that session | +0.39% |
SPY
• NeutralSPDR S&P 500 ETF
Relevance: low
| Market | US stocks |
|---|---|
| Sector | ETF |
| Close on 10/21/2026 | 773.13 |
| Change that session | +0.53% |
Impact is scored by AI from the headline and may be wrong. It is not investment advice.
Related news
- SK Hynix plunges 8% amid Asia tech rout as Fed rate hike fears, AI funding worries mount
Global technology hardware stocks extended their sell-off on Thursday, with Asian chipmakers following Wall Street's losses. SK Hynix fell over 8% and Samsung Electronics dropped 7.1%, while LG Innotek, Seoul Semiconductor and Samsung SDI lost between 6.8% and 8.1%. In Japan, SoftBank Group fell 7.9% and Advantest 6.9%, with Tokyo Electron and Renesas Electronics each down 5.4%. Investors fear further Federal Reserve rate hikes could raise borrowing costs for massive AI infrastructure spending, after hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation data drove a sharp Wall Street sell-off, with the Nasdaq Composite down 1.88% to 26,692.87, the S&P 500 down 1.11% to 7,718.94 and the Dow Jones down 0.09%.
- Asian stocks sink to 3 - month low on tech angst , Gulf tensions
Asian stocks fell on Thursday as a selloff led by technology shares unfolded, with investors worried about soaring AI spending, while escalating Gulf tensions lifted oil prices. MSCI's broadest Asia-Pacific index excluding Japan dropped 1.8% to its lowest in nearly three months and was on track for a fourth straight weekly decline, with Japan's Nikkei down about 2%, Korean shares down more than 4% and the Hang Seng Index down more than 3%. Tokyo Electron fell more than 6%, SK Hynix 5.7%, Samsung 4.2% and Alibaba 6.5%. Brent crude rose more than 2% to $111.03 a barrel, near a five-month high, after new Houthi attacks in Saudi Arabia, while the US 10-year Treasury yield fell to 5.0857%. Gold eased to $4,067.5 an ounce and bitcoin fell 2.2% to $82,771.05.
- Iran floating oil reserves in Asia run dry under US naval blockade , WSJ reports
- Asian markets dip as investors weigh tech earnings , Gulf tensions
- Asia stocks slide as AI jitters hit Korean chipmakers
Asian stocks fell on Thursday as mixed earnings from major U.S. tech companies failed to reassure investors about returns on heavy AI spending, with the MSCI Asia Pacific index down around 1%. South Korea's KOSPI fell 2.1%, led by chipmakers SK Hynix (down 4%) and Samsung Electronics (down 3.6%), while Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 2.7% and China's CSI 300 slid 1.6%. The Nasdaq 100 fell 5.5% last week, its steepest weekly drop since April 2025, as investors questioned whether heavy data-centre spending can pay off amid AI bubble concerns. Mainland Chinese equities also weakened on fading stimulus hopes and lacklustre earnings, and are approaching a bear market.
- Hedge Fund Stock Pickers Lost 2 . 9 % in a Week as AI Trades Unwound , Goldman Sachs Data Showed :
Global fundamental long-short hedge funds lost money every day in the week to Oct. 15, ending down 2.9%, though they remain up 14.3% year to date, according to Goldman Sachs prime brokerage data. Asia-focused stock pickers were hit hardest, down 6.8% in the first half of October and erasing more than half of their gains since a late-June peak. Goldman said the selling was mainly long liquidation rather than new shorts, with hedge funds net selling its Global AI Basket for six straight sessions by Friday, reversing net buying since early last year. South Korea's KOSPI fell more than 7% on Oct. 15 and Taiwanese stocks dropped more than 3%. The strategy's one-day loss exceeded 80 basis points three times in 2026 (Feb. 4, July 28 and Oct. 15), after never doing so from Covid through the end of 2025, with a hotter-than-expected US inflation reading as the trigger.
Related markets
Latest news
- SpaceX Just Crushed Wall Street's Q3 Targets -- but a Potential Tesla Merger Is Even Bigger News
SpaceX reported third-quarter adjusted EPS of $0.45 on sales of $14.58 billion, far above analyst averages of $0.13 and $12.72 billion. Revenue rose 161% year over year and net income swung to $4.4 billion from a $1.1 billion loss a year earlier; Starlink sales grew 69% to $5.25 billion, while the superintelligence segment rose about 830% to $7.56 billion. The company guided first-quarter 2027 sales to $33–37 billion, and Musk said he expects annual recurring revenue of $500 billion–$1 trillion by the end of next year. On the call, Musk said special committees had been formed to explore a merger with Tesla, that he could not take part due to conflicts, and that merging was a good idea, though shareholder approval equal to 50% of total shares would be a significant hurdle.
- Chip stocks break a bear trap after a $2.6 trillion rout — here are the levels bulls need to hold
The PHLX Semiconductor Index (^SOX) is down about 3% after dipping to 11,000, a support level that has rescued chip stocks twice since September, so the bear-trap rebound only holds if that floor does. Since Oct. 6, all 60 stocks in Yahoo Finance's chip basket have fallen, erasing about $2.7 trillion in market value; Lam Research and Applied Materials are each down nearly 30%, AMD nearly 20%, and Nvidia 9%. Lam fell despite record revenue because it said supply limits would cap its outlook and China sales would be “meaningfully down” in December. The Nasdaq 100 is down about 6% over the same period. The article flags 10,450–10,550 as the zone to watch if 11,000 breaks, and 12,600–12,700 as the level bulls must reclaim, while semiconductor ETFs saw record flows over the past week.
- A New Mexico Judge Just Hit Meta With a $25 Billion Penalty
On October 21, 2026, a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay the state $25 billion over misleading Facebook users about privacy in the Cambridge Analytica case, far above the FTC's $5 billion fine in 2019. Jurors found 26 of 29 statements misleading, and counting each statement per user or resident who saw it produced more than 43 million violations, with state law allowing up to $5,000 each; all the money goes to New Mexico schools. The judge said the conduct went to the heart of Facebook's core business and found that senior leaders, including Zuckerberg and Sandberg, misrepresented its privacy practices. Meta is appealing, has paid nothing, and interest keeps accruing, while the penalty equals about 2.5 times its $9.86 billion third-quarter net income.
- Elon Musk says Tesla's Optimus robot needs to learn like a toddler
Elon Musk said on Tesla’s earnings call that Optimus humanoid robots must learn through self-play at scale, since Tesla lacks the vast car fleet that supplies training data, likening this to how a toddler learns to navigate the world by playing. Tesla cut its 2026 capex outlook to about $20 billion from $25 billion as it prioritizes usable humanoids. Optimus V3 production began at Fremont in the summer after Model S and Model X output ended there, with about 1,000 Gen 3 units already operating on the production floor. William Blair analyst Jed Dorsheimer said Musk pushed the timeline for a 1 million-unit weekly run-rate to over a year, with first applications in dangerous industrial settings by the end of 2027.
- Meta's new stock sale sends one signal: AI demand isn't slowing down
Brian Sozzi of Yahoo Finance sees Meta's new non-voting share class as a positive signal. CFO Susan Li said the class can be used for capital raising, employee pay and acquisitions while preserving the voting power of existing Class A and B shareholders. Sozzi expects Zuckerberg to remain CEO for at least 15 more years, and says raising capital through stock may be cheaper than borrowing, since debt costs could rise for borrowers such as CoreWeave. He also reads the sale as a sign that AI demand is not slowing, pointing to better ad placement and monetization that helped the quarter's results.
- Elon Musk: SpaceX Revenue Could Hit “Somewhere Between $500 Billion and a Trillion” by 2027
On the earnings call, Elon Musk said SpaceX’s annual recurring revenue could reach between $500 billion and a trillion by the end of 2027, a goal that requires building compute faster than almost any company has tried. SpaceX posted its first quarterly profit of $4.4 billion in the latest quarter, versus a $1.1 billion loss a year earlier, with revenue up more than 160% to $14.6 billion; capex of $19.6 billion could reach $40 billion next quarter. Management says new compute installations pay back in under a year if prices hold, but the target of 13 GW by end-2027, up from 1.7 GW, depends on power, cooling, and NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin systems arriving on time. Shares rose 7.79% to $159.31, and a Tesla combination would need approval from 50% of Tesla’s outstanding shares, a hard bar given many holders never vote.
Get the briefing on Telegram or Zalo
Join the Upside Telegram channel or Zalo group for the Vietnam stocks and gold briefing at 8:00 and 19:00 (Vietnam time) on trading days, plus a weekly wrap on Saturday morning.