TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares stumbled to their lowest in six months on Friday, hurt by signs U.S. trade battles with China and many other countries are starting to chip away at corporate profits, while oil prices were choppy before an OPEC meeting to discuss raising output.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS dropped as much as 0.35 percent at one point to touch its weakest since early December before erasing losses to be up 0.15 percent. Still it was 2.3 percent off for the week.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng .HSI plumbed six-month lows, having lost 3.9 percent so far this week. South Korea's KOSPI .KS11 hit nine-month lows and in mainland China, the CSI300 index .CSI300 lost almost 5 percent this week to one-year lows.
Japan's Nikkei .N225 gave up 0.8 percent for a weekly loss of 1.7 percent.
European stock futures point to slightly firmer openings in Britain's FTSE FFIc1 .FTSE, France's CAC FCEc1 .FCHI and Germany's DAX FDXc1 .GDAXI from multi-week lows hit the previous day.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell for an eighth straight session on Thursday and the S&P 500 .SPX lost 0.63 percent, with industrials .SPLRCI and materials shares .SPLRCM taking a hard knock.
Even the high-flying Nasdaq Composite .IXIC, which has outperformed this year on the perception that high-tech shares were less vulnerable to trade wars, shed 0.88 percent.
In a sign that escalating tensions between the United States and
