Asian Stocks Follow US Lower, China Set to Return: Markets Wrap
(Bloomberg) — Asian shares fell at the open after fresh anxiety over the impact of artificial intelligence on company profits roiled Wall Street, while uncertainty over tariffs added to traders’ concerns.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index edged down 0.2%, with shares in South Korea — a bellwether for AI investments — falling 0.5%. Attention later will turn to mainland China’s markets, which are set to reopen after the Lunar New Year holiday period.
The moves in Asia came after the S&P 500 Index slid 1%, with tech, delivery and payment shares hit as Citrini Research laid out the potential AI risks to various industries. International Business Machines Corp. tumbled 13% in its worst day since October 2000 as Anthropic said its Claude Code could help modernize COBOL, a programming language mainly run on IBM computers.
Amid lingering uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s tariffs, concerns about AI-driven disruption are prompting traders to dump shares of any company seen at the slightest risk of being displaced. Those worries have also grown despite solid results from megacaps amid doubts over whether big investments in the technology will pay off soon.
“The software selloff is a reminder of what can happen when momentum-driven sectors shift into reverse,” said Steve Sosnick at Interactive Brokers. “The broader, more important question is: How many sectors can go into reverse before they drag the broader market along with them?”
Read: Taleb, Citrini Fuel AI Scare Trade as IBM Drops Most in 25 Years
While software companies have been among the hardest hit, insurance brokers, private credit firms, cybersecurity and even real estate services stocks in the US have all been caught up in the so-called AI scare trade.
Asian shares have outperformed, with MSCI’s regional gauge rising 12% this year compared with a 0.1% decline in the S&P 500 over the same period. That marks the index’s strongest start to a year relative to the US benchmark on record.
In other corners of the market, Treasuries and gold held their gains from the US session, when traders pared back risk and sought haven assets. Bitcoin continued to trade below $65,000. The dollar was little changed in early trading on Tuesday.
In other commodities, oil steadied as Trump said his preference was for a nuclear deal with Iran ahead of talks between the two nations this week.
Meanwhile, questions over US tariffs added to the downbeat mood on Monday.
After the Supreme Court’s decision Friday to nix Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs, the White House announced plans to replace the prior levies with a new, across-the-board 15% tariff on US imports. The European Union froze ratification of its US trade deal amid the uncertainty.
Read: Global Trade Confusion Returns as Trump Shifts Tariff Tools
The US is readying a spate of additional national security investigations that would enable Trump to impose new tariffs, as the administration seeks to rebuild his global tariff regime.
The administration is considering new national security tariffs on a half-dozen industries, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the plans.
“The push and pull with tariffs is likely to be a distracting theme for markets for the remainder of the year, albeit with less volatility than the initial shock last April,” said Michael Landsberg at Landsberg Bennett Private Wealth Management.
Corporate Highlights:
JPMorgan Chase & Co. expects to earn about $104.5 billion in net interest income this year, more than it anticipated just last month when it reported quarterly earnings. Anthropic PBC Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei will meet with US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday, according to a senior Pentagon official, as contract talks with the artificial intelligence startup remain deadlocked over the company’s insistence on guardrails for use of its technology. Anthropic said three leading artificial intelligence developers in China worked to “illicitly extract” results from its AI models to bolster the capabilities of rival products. PayPal Holdings Inc., the digital payments pioneer, is attracting takeover interest from potential buyers after a stock slide wiped out almost half of its value, according to people familiar with the matter. Merck & Co. is splitting its main pharmaceutical unit in two in an effort to better highlight the parts of the business that are growing, as it stares down a patent cliff for its best-selling cancer drug Keytruda. Paramount Skydance Corp. raised its offer to buy Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., extending the long-running battle for one of Hollywood’s iconic studios. Some of the main moves in markets:
Stocks
S&P 500 futures rose 0.1% as of 9:42 a.m. Tokyo time Hang Seng futures fell 0.7% Nikkei 225 futures (OSE) rose 0.5% Japan’s Topix was little changed Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was little changed Euro Stoxx 50 futures rose 0.1% Currencies
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed The euro was little changed at $1.1793 The Japanese yen was little changed at 154.74 per dollar The offshore yuan was little changed at 6.8884 per dollar The Australian dollar was little changed at $0.7062 Cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin rose 0.6% to $64,947.73 Ether rose 0.1% to $1,866.12 Bonds
The yield on 10-year Treasuries was little changed at 4.04% Japan’s 10-year yield declined 3.5 basis points to 2.070% Australia’s 10-year yield declined two basis points to 4.70% Commodities
West Texas Intermediate crude fell 0.1% to $66.23 a barrel Spot gold was little changed This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.
–With assistance from Richard Henderson.
©2026 Bloomberg L.P.
