Asian markets closed sharply lower on Friday, 6 November, as the technology sell-off that hit Wall Street spread across the region, pushing Japan's Nikkei 225 into a bear market and forcing a trading halt in South Korea.

Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 5.96% to close at 57,434.77, its worst day since April 2025, according to market summaries of Friday's session. The index has now fallen more than 20% from the record high above 72,000 it reached in late June, the threshold commonly used to define a bear market. SoftBank Group fell by more than 10%, while memory-chip maker Kioxia dropped 8.72%.

Seoul halts trading as Kospi dives

South Korea's Kospi fell 6.02% to close at 5,059.69 after plunging more than 8% during the session to an intraday low of 4,911.28. Trading was halted for 20 minutes by a Level 1 circuit breaker at 9:03 a.m. local time after the index broke below 5,000 for the first time since February. The government convened an emergency meeting to review market conditions, and support buying helped the index recover some ground before the close. The Kosdaq fell 5.03% to 644.27.

Losses spread across the region

The falls were not confined to Japan and South Korea. Taiwan's Taiex ended 4.5% lower, its largest daily fall since July, with chipmaker TSMC down 4.7%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 1.27% to 24,481.86, while China's Shanghai Composite declined 1.10% to 3,649.18 and Australia's ASX 200 slipped 0.49%.

The rout followed Thursday's heavy losses on Wall Street, where the Nasdaq Composite fell 5.52% and the S&P 500 dropped 4.36% as investors retreated from high-growth technology shares on concern that investment in artificial-intelligence data centres could slow.