- Asian stocks fall from Shanghai to Singapore
- Australia’s ASX 200 also drops
- Social media stocks suffer in the US
Stock markets in Asia dropped on Monday following a sharp drop in the American tech sector on Friday.
South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.1% to 2,293.92 and the Japanese Nikkei 225 dropped to 22,587.70 (-0.6%). Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dropped 0.5% to 28,653.29 and the Shanghai Composite Index fell by 0.4% to 2,863.40. Stock prices also sank in Singapore and Taiwan, while shares gained in Indonesia.
Australia’s ASX 200 dropped by 0.5% to 6,266.30.
Tech shares led a downturn in US stocks at the end of last week. The S&P 500 dropped to 2,818.82 (-0.7%). The Dow Jones dropped to 25,451.06 (-0.3%) and the Nasdaq fell to 7,737.42 (-1.5%). The Russell 2000 dropped to 1,663.34 (-1.9%).
Twitter announced a drop in its monthly users on Friday, causing its stock price to drop by 20.5% to $34.12. Snap, the firm that owns Snapchat, dropped by 4% to $12.83. Facebook fell by another 0.8% to $174.89.
Amazon.com, however, traded 0.5% higher at $1.817.27 after it reported its largest profit ever.
Annual growth in the US economy reached 4.1% in Q2, the highest rate since 2014. President Trump said this was not a “one-time shot”, but many economists believe he is wrong. The second quarter saw around a third of companies issue earnings reports, many of which were better than expected. This increased the chances that the Fed might increase rates this week.
The US crude oil price increased to $68.81 per barrel (+$0.12) on the NY Mercantile Exchange but lost $0.92 to end the day at $68.69 on Friday. The price of Brent crude oil, meanwhile, dropped to $74.70 (-$0.06).
The USD/JPY rate strengthened to 111.11 on Friday (+0.11), while the EUR/USD rate weakened marginally to 1.1653 from 1.1656.
