Asian shares slide as global growth fears mount

Asian stocks slid on Thursday, tracking a steep Wall Street selloff, as investors worried about global inflation, China’s zero-COVID policy and the Ukraine war, while the safe-haven dollar eased.

European equity markets also looked set for another rough day. The pan-region Euro Stoxx 50 futures fell 0.52%, German DAX futures were down 0.63% while FTSE futures were 0.51% lower.

Nasdaq futures eased 0.15%, although S&P500 futures reversed earlier losses to be 0.05% higher.

Overnight on Wall Street, retail giant Target Corp warned of a bigger margin hit due to rising costs as it reported its quarterly profit had halved. Its shares plunged 24.88%. The Nasdaq fell almost 5% while the S&P 500 lost 4%.

“The bounce on Tuesday was proven to have been ‘too optimistic’, thus the self-doubt stemming from the misjudgement only makes traders click the sell button even harder,” said Hebe Chen, market analyst at IG.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan snapped four days of gains and slumped 1.8%, dragged down by a 1.5% loss for Australia’s resource-heavy index , a 2.1% drop in Hong Kong stocks and a 0.3% retreat in mainland China’s bluechips.

Japan’s Nikkei shed 1.7%.

Tech giants listed in Hong Kong were hit particularly hard, with the index falling more than 3%. Tencent sank more than 6% after it reported no revenue growth in the first quarter, its worst performance since going public in 2004.

China’s technology sector is still reeling from a year-long government crackdown and slowing economic prospects stemming from Beijing’s strict zero-COVID policy, even though soothing comments from Vice Premier Liu He to tech executives had buoyed sentiment on Wednesday.