Nikkei plunges 4%, leading losses in Asia after Wall Street plummets on weak U.S. data

Asia-Pacific markets plunged on Wednesday, led by Japan’s Nikkei 225 after U.S. tech stocks sold off and weak U.S. economic data sparked recession fears.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 4.01%, leading losses in Asia, while the broad based Topix was down 2.74%.

Semiconductor related stocks such as Tokyo Electron lost 6.86%, while Renesas Electronics and Advantest tumbled over 9%.

South Korea’s Kospi lost 2.61% on its open, as well as the small cap Kosdaq, which saw a 2.94% loss. Heavyweights Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix — both Nvidia suppliers — lost 2.76% and 6.95% respectively.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 1.46%.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index futures were at 17,487, lower than the HSI’s last close of 17,651.49.

In the U.S., chipmaker Nvidia lost over 9% in regular trading, dragging other counterparts along with it, such as Intel, AMD and Marvell.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH), an index that tracks semiconductor stocks, was down 7.5%, its worst day since March 2020.

Separately, the ISM manufacturing index for August came in at 47.2% for the month, up 0.4 percentage points from July, but below the 47.9% expected from Dow Jones. The gauge measures the percentage of companies reporting expansion, so anything below 50% represents contraction.

All three major indexes recorded their worst days since the Aug. 5 global sell-off. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.51% and the S&P 500 down 2.12%. The Nasdaq Composite saw the largest loss, tumbling 3.26%.

—CNBC’s Fred Imbert and Alex Harring contributed to this report.