TOKYO (Reuters) - World stocks extended a sell-off on Tuesday as escalating trade tussles between the United States and other major economies steered investors away from riskier assets, with markets in China bearing the brunt of investor anxiety.
Spreadbetters expected European shares to open slightly higher following the previous day’s sharp losses, with Britain’s FTSE gaining 0.25 percent, Germany’s DAX rising 0.35 percent and France’s CAC climbing 0.25 percent.
The tense atmosphere lifted demand for safe-haven U.S. Treasuries and kept the dollar on the defensive as financial markets worried about the wider global economic fallout of the Trump administration’s “America First’ agenda.
Asian equities were lower across the board after Wall Street tumbled, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq suffering their steepest losses in more than two months overnight. [.N]
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.27 percent.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng retreated 0.2 percent, the Shanghai Composite Index slid 0.8 percent, and Japan’s Nikkei was down 0.1 percent after trimming most of its earlier losses.
Tech-heavy indexes such as South Korea’s KOSPI and Taiwan’s weighted index fell 0.45 percent and 0.55 percent, respectively.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co was down 1.8 percent, South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix Inc lost 1 percent and Japan’s Tokyo Electron was down 0.6 percent. Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings shed 0.3 percent.
Asian tech shares slid after U.S. peers, which derive much of their sales revenue from China, took a battering overnight.
Sparking the drop in tech shares and souring broader sentiment was a report on Monday that the U.S. Treasury Department was drafting curbs that would block companies with at least
