美股科技股大跌拖累亚太，中国股市进入熊市

[music] Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts radio news. [music] Welcome to the Daybreak Asia podcast. I'm Doug Krer. Tech stocks across the Asia-Pacific are struggling on this Friday morning after a route in US equities. We had the market re-evaluating the trade in artificial intelligence during the US session and the declines we saw were most prominent among the chip makers. The Philadelphia semiconductor index was down 6.7%.

One example, shares in the chipmunk equipment supplier Lamb Research fell by more than 11%. The company is expecting revenue from China to decline significantly in the current quarter. And if you move away from the semis, you'll find Meta Platforms down 7% in the US session after the company forecasted jump in AI cap X. This reignited fears over the sustainability of those investment returns. For a closer look at what we're seeing across the Asia Pacific, let's bring in Bloomberg's Winnie Sue.

Winnie is Asia equities reporter and she joins from our studios in Hong Kong. Thank you for being here. Let's begin with the chip stocks right now. What are you seeing today? It's been a very brutal day or I would say a very brutal week for Asia stocks especially the chip stocks because right now as you say there's so many questions around AI but the only thing that were it's is certain is that people are very they feel very unsafe or uncertain about um either way AI goes right because you just mentioned how Meta is um ramping up their capital expenditure and people are not happy about that because they don't know where that money can be coming from.

But then yesterday you had Tesla cutting their capital expenditure and supposed to be good news but then people were still unhappy because they think that that might mean slower demand, slower growth. So either way things go, it seems like there's just no right um direction of this AI investment and people are just pulling money away from the trade and that's why you're seeing chip makers especially in Asia which um are pretty much the center of this discussion this debate are getting hit the most especially also after how far they have run.

So overall sentiment is just very fragile right now

especially in China and that was a little bit surprising to me when you step back and look that we are now I guess in a bare market for Chinese equities. [gasps and sighs]

Yeah really have been underperforming. You're talking about the onshore benchmark CSI 300 uh slipping into bare territory which means it's down by about 20% since its recent peak. And also worth flagging that the tech shares in Hong Kong, HStech down about 5% yesterday, but when you look at year-to- date performance down more than 30% and it is very close to wiping out all the gains since that 2024 big stimulus by China.

So here I guess two things. One, the overall weakness that we see in Chinese equities is that disappointment in policy. This year a lot of people were expecting more support for consumption but you're not getting that and people are now not expecting that to happen because overall growth seems to be um quite strong because of the strength in export. So less of an incentive for the government to push uh for the domestic side of things.

And the second part of it is that you're seeing these tech stocks in Hong Kong showing even more underperformance than the broader Chinese benchmark. And that's coming as these gauges actually um have a lot of these e-commerce related names. So the the big names like Alibaba, like Tencent and they have been doing quite poorly because of their exposure to consumer actually. So their exposure to consumer and how like we just said policy has been more focused on tech instead of households and although they are somewhat seen also as tech names they have been investing in so much money in the whole um AI investment but that is not showing up in any monetization just yet.

So when the questions around AI emerge they are getting hit as well. That's why you're seeing really this big underperformance. And when it comes to Hong Kong, we've known that a big support has been the money from mainland China. But when you look at that southbound flow so far this year, just onethird of what we saw last year. So that goes to show you how investors are generally not very uh willing to pour money into the market right now given how um there's lack of catalyst whether it's from the policy side, tech side, innovation side.

You mentioned the fact that there had been a little bit of disappointment that there hasn't been more done in terms of government support for the domestic economy in China. And I'm wondering whether that's also showing up in some of the consumer names particularly as it relates to e-commerce, a name like Alibaba. Is that happening?

Yeah, exactly. So in fact we saw Alibaba shares down about 6% yesterday and that is coming after regulators authorities stepping in to urge these e-commerce platforms to tighten their product quality control. So that is the latest example of how there is also a lack of support for uh the growth of the e-commerce space. you're still seeing all these um strategies or policies to be more on the restricting side, the tightening side.

So when investors see that they feel like um overall there is a lack of push to boost uh the growth over there and with that you just mentioned how overall there is the lack of policy to support the consumption side of things because the latest data that we saw from the economic side again showing that GDP strength is very strong and then you see very strong export growth and that's why in order for the government to reach that goal of their annual target.

They're pretty much on track right now with the support from exports. So they don't see much of a a necessity right now to boost for the consumption side of things. So when we talk to investors, they also feel that an interesting perspective to look at this is that right now if they're expecting potential further whether it's recession or further downturn when it comes to the global economy because of the high oil prices that we're looking at right now because of the inflation picture, it might actually be good for China to just hold back on any potential policy boost for further if they see um a uh potential u downturn in the global economy.

So the timing there actually for them they feel like they can still wait out a little bit more.

So before I let you go, I want to get your take on what's going on with the yen. And I mentioned that because I mentioned the downdraft in US stocks and the haven buying that we had in treasuries, but the yen also saw a lot of haven flow. And we're trading right now at around a 156 handle against the greenback. We know next week the Bank of Japan is set to meet. There will be a debate on whether or not they've achieved this inflation target, whether they've reached that.

But talk to me a little bit about what is the issues that are confronting the Bank of Japan right now. And I bring that up only because it seems as though the currency has strengthened and taking maybe taken a little bit of pressure away from the BOJ. So when it comes to the rate expectation right now, I think overall consensus right now is that most likely we won't be getting another rate hike. But the possibility of the December rate hike is actually very high right now.

Especially when you look at the economic data today, we got the uh Japan inflation data actually seeing pretty strong numbers rising above the Bank of Japan target for the first time this year. So actually you would be expecting that investors might be expecting the Bank of Japan to raise rates even faster and even further. uh at this point and just because of the overall economic situation, it seems like the likelihood of December is a higher one right now.

Well, you just mentioned how the yen has actually been strengthening as well because of this whole um haven bet and how investors are rotat