What Causes Asia Markets to Plunge on Nov. 20, 2018?
What causes the plummet today? It's the negative sentiment from Wall Street that was hit by the lost in tech group that plunges our markets.
To talk about the red board in Asia stock markets, let’s check out the Wall Street first as it usually is the reason behind the plummet when no internal issue occurs. On November 19, 2018, Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 395.78 points or 1.56% to 25,017.44. The S&P 500 dropped 1.7% to 2,690.73 as the technology sector pulled back 3.8%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite lagged, falling 3% to close at 7,028.48 as Amazon dropped 5.1%.
The well known “FAANG” trade made up of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Alphabet (Google) is now in a bear market with each member down more than 20% from their one-year highs.
Apple led tech shares lower after The Wall Street Journal reported the company has cut production orders for the new iPhones unveiled earlier this year. As well as a report on cutting electric parts from suppliers last week. Apple fell nearly 4% and fell back into a bear market, down 20% from its 52-week high.
Facebook shares sunk 5.7% as the company was hit with more negative publicity regarding the fallout from its handling of the 2016 election and foreign influence on its platform. In the Wall Street Journal report said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg blamed COO Sheryl Sandberg for how the company handled the situation.
This report comes after backlash from a New York Times article detailing how Facebook company ignored and then tried to hide that Russia used the platform to disrupt the U.S. election in 2016.
The FAANG group is the five technology giants trading publicly in the market today. As of March 2018, the market capitalization of these companies was $3.015 trillion (฿99 trillion). The whole SET’s market capitalization in October 2018 was only ฿17 trillion. That is how big the FAANG group is, and when the majority of the tech group went down, Wall Street will follow, as well as Asia markets in the next trading day.
Thus, lead to the plummet in Asia markets on November 20, 2018. At 10:01 in Thailand, NIKKEI fell 0.86%, led by Nissan to plunge 5.5% in early trade after its chairman, Carlos Ghosn, was arrested on Monday over allegations of financial misconduct. SSEC tumbled 1.13%, HSI slid 1.32%, ASX 200 shed 0.81%, KOSPI plunged 0.72%. Meanwhile, SET kicks off the day by falling 0.34% or 5.54 points to 1,630.94 points.