Asia
Stock market volatility hit the Asia-Pacific region again on Friday, with South Korea’s Kospi and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng the biggest falling indices in percentage terms.
The weakness in the region’s stock markets was more pronounced because of Wall Street’s closing gains, especially as the tech-focused Nasdaq rose nearly 3% on the day.
The missed forecasts from Alphabet and Amazon overnight set up Asia’s tech firms for a fall, not least Hang Seng-listed Tencent (00700), which lost over 3%. Tencent’s shares peaked at 471 Hong Kong dollars in January this year but are now trading at HKD260.
Europe
Investors in European shares caught the weaker mood from Asia and on Friday the major indices were nursing chunky losses. France’s CAC 40 was the biggest faller, losing 2% on the day, but Italy, Germany and Spain were not too far behind.
The UK’s FTSE 100 was down over 100 points in mid-morning trading to below 6,900 points. Shares in bailed-out bank Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) as it revealed an extra £100 million for Brexit, despite posting a rise in profits.
North America
It is a measure of how elevated expectations are for America’s biggest tech giants that missed forecasts from Google parent company Alphabet (GOOGL) and Amazon (AMZN) were punished by investors in after-hours trading: Alphabet shares are 5% lower and Amazon’s down nearly 8%.
A 21% rise in Alphabet revenue on the year to nearly $34 billion was not enough for analysts, who were expecting a higher figure. Again, for Amazon, slowing revenue growth was the concern for investors, who looked past the $1 billion a month record profit for the retailer. Amazon Web Services was the standout division for the retail giant.
Apple (AAPL) and Facebook (FB) results are due next week.
The highlight of this week’s economic calendar is the first reading of third quarter US GDP, which is expected to show strong growth, albeit not at the pace seen in the second quarter of 2018.