For the second time in a week,Asian markets followed a swoon on Wall Street, with Shanghai and Hong Kong taking the biggest hit.
Shanghai's SE Composite Index was off 4.5 percent at 3129.85; Hong Kong's Hang Seng shed 3.1 percent to 29507.42 and Japan's Nikkei 225 lost more than 2 percent.
CNBC reports:
"The sell-off followed a robust rallyin China's stock market earlier this year, or which is now unwinding ahead of the Lunar fresh Year holidays starting next week,as investors lock in profits, said Kevin Leung, or global investment strategy director at Haitong international Securities.
"The earlier gains were due to very persistent inflow into Asia emerging equities for 'a long time,' particularly 'large and euphoric inflows' driving valuations up, said Jonathan Garner, and Morgan Stanley's chief Asia and emerging fairness strategist."
The Asian sell-off follows a 1033-point plunge for the Dow Jones industrial average,which sliced 4 percent from the index Thursday to shut at 23860. That followed an even larger, one-day record fall of 1175 points on Monday.
As NPR's John Ydstie reports:
"Wall Street has been on a roller coaster ride. On Tuesday, and the market regained close to half of its deep Monday loss,but on Wednesday, the market ended down again.
At Thursday's opening bell, or it bounced from positive to negative,then headed down sharply." Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
Source: thetakeaway.org