Asia Market Wrap 22 October: All Ten Indices Fall and Seoul Drops 3.52 Percent
Seoul’s Kospi fell 3.52 percent on Thursday as chip shares gave back Wednesday’s rebound, the deepest decline on a day when all ten of the indices we track closed lower. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 lost 2.65 percent and finished at its low of the day. The Bank of Korea kept its policy rate at 3 percent and signalled that tightening is not over. Brent crude traded 2.85 percent higher at 111.92 dollars a barrel at 12:45 GMT.
Seoul Gives Wednesday Back in a Day
The Kospi closed at 5,533.77, down 201.89 points on our calculation, more than the 182.92 points it had regained on Wednesday. The index opened 1.14 percent lower, briefly turned positive at an intraday high of 5,740.28, then slid through the afternoon. Yonhap’s close report said investors took profits on the chipmakers that led Wednesday’s rebound, quoting a Daishin Securities analyst who said results from Meta Platforms and Tesla beat market expectations but failed to ease concerns over profitability amid heavy spending on artificial intelligence, and that the end of SK hynix’s share-buyback program removed a source of demand. Samsung Electronics fell 4.03 percent to 214,500 won and SK hynix 5.49 percent to 1.22 million won. Decliners outnumbered advancers 706 to 174 on Yonhap’s count, volume was light, and institutions were net sellers. The won firmed to 1,324.2 per dollar. The Bank of Korea, meeting the same morning, kept its base rate at 3 percent after the back-to-back increases of July and August; all seven members of its rate-setting committee backed the freeze, and the bank said it judged it necessary to assess the effects of the two prior hikes, and Governor Shin Hyun-song told his press conference that it is necessary to continue monetary tightening. Consumer prices rose 2.9 percent in September, above the bank’s 2 percent target.
The Selling Runs Deepest Where the Chips Are
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 closed at 62,907.84, which was also the session’s low on the index administrator’s own page, after a high of 64,866.44 in the first quarter hour; the administrator’s semiconductor stock index dropped 5.28 percent and its Nikkei volatility index jumped 16.60 percent to 35.97. The Topix lost 1.14 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 3.03 percent, a third straight decline, with the administrator’s Hang Seng TECH index down 5.03 percent. The Shenzhen Component lost 2.96 percent, a third straight fall, and the Shanghai Composite 1.48 percent, a second. Taiwan’s Taiex dropped 1.81 percent. The day’s shallowest falls sat farthest from the technology trade: India’s Nifty 50 eased 0.54 percent to 22,687.65, a third straight decline, with 14 of its 50 members higher against 36 lower on the exchange’s own count; Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.43 percent and Singapore’s Straits Times 0.42 percent.
Shallowest falls
| Index | Close | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Straits Times (Singapore) | 5,415.14 | -0.42% |
| S&P/ASX 200 (Australia) | 8,793.20 | -0.43% |
| Nifty 50 (India) | 22,687.65 | -0.54% |
| Topix (Japan) | 3,997.50 | -1.14% |
| Shanghai Composite (China) | 3,658.03 | -1.48% |
All ten indices closed lower, so the pair of tables splits today as the shallowest and the deepest falls, with the reason disclosed here. Closes of Thursday 22 October from the exchanges, index administrators and CNBC’s feed, ranked by change against Wednesday’s closes as published. Run lengths are counted against our published closes.
Deepest falls
| Index | Close | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Kospi (South Korea) | 5,533.77 | -3.52% |
| Hang Seng (Hong Kong) | 22,934.68 | -3.03% |
| Shenzhen Component (China) | 11,357.32 | -2.96% |
| Nikkei 225 (Japan) | 62,907.84 | -2.65% |
| Taiex (Taiwan) | 46,041.43 | -1.81% |
Deepest falls, same session and basis, ranked from the deepest. The Nikkei 225 close is the index administrator’s own figure.
Commodities and currencies
| Instrument | Level | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Gold, COMEX (Dec’26), dollars an ounce | 4,087.70 | -1.50% |
| Silver, COMEX (Dec’26), dollars an ounce | 55.88 | -3.17% |
| Brent Crude, ICE (Dec’26), dollars a barrel | 111.92 | +2.85% |
| WTI Crude, NYMEX (Dec’26), dollars a barrel | 99.39 | +2.31% |
| US Dollar Index (DXY) | 101.79 | +0.01% |
| Euro/Dollar | 1.1203 | -0.26% |
| Sterling/Dollar | 1.3367 | -0.20% |
| Dollar/Yen | 157.20 | -0.59% |
Intraday quotes at 12:45 GMT, in fixed order; snapshots, not settlements. The commodity rows are measured against Wednesday’s settlements, the currency and dollar-index rows against the feed’s previous reference levels.
Why it matters: Wednesday’s relief did not survive its first test. One earnings beat was enough to turn the chip complex around on Wednesday; two more beats, from Meta Platforms and Tesla, were not enough to keep it turned, because the question the market is asking has shifted from whether the results are good to what the spending behind them will earn. The day’s depth chart says the same thing: the markets that fell hardest, Seoul, Hong Kong and Shenzhen, are the ones that carry the region’s technology weight, while India, Australia and Singapore barely moved. Of the 33 indices we published on Wednesday, the Kospi led at 3.29 percent and the MSX 30 lagged at 1.51 percent lower, on our count.
Outlook: Asia trades again on Friday, with investors weighing the Bank of Korea’s tightening signal and the week’s remaining American results still to land. Oil’s rise, if it holds through the settlements, feeds the inflation arithmetic every central bank in the region is watching. Thursday closes the trading week for most of the region’s exchanges, while Dubai and Abu Dhabi trade again on Friday; our Middle East wrap follows today.
How these wraps are prepared: Methodology.
Sources: Yonhap, Bank of Korea, National Stock Exchange of India, Nikkei, Hang Seng Indexes, CNBC, The Edge.
