Yahoo Finance Asian Equities Mixed; Facebook Plunges Almost 20%
Investing.com – Asian stocks were mixed in morning trade on Friday as technology stocks took a hit in the U.S. after Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) reported a miss in second-quarter revenue and its CFO warned of revenue growth slowdown. The company’s shares plunged as much as 20% on the back of those results, marking the largest ever loss of value in one day for a U.S. traded company.
In Asia, China’s Shanghai Composite and the Shenzhen Component fell 0.3% and 0.7% respectively by 10:00PM ET (02:00 GMT). The Hang Seng Index was down 0.3%.
Chinese Ambassador Zhang Xiangchen said Beijing wouldn’t respond to heavy-handed tactics. “Extortion, distortion or demonization does no good to resolve the issues,” Zhang said Thursday in Geneva. “Holding our feet to the fire has never worked,” he added.
Another Chinese official added at an event in Beijing that China will retaliate against any additional U.S. tariffs, regardless of the volume of goods targeted.
“We clearly have a chronic problem with China,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in Senate testimony on Thursday, adding that trade problems with Beijing will take years to resolve.
Elsewhere, Japan’s Nikkei 225 climbed 0.2% in morning trade. The country’s core consumer prices rose 0.8% in July from a year earlier, data showed on Friday, compared with the general consensus for a 0.7% gain.
Nomura fell as much as 5% the company reported net profit in the quarter ending in June fell to 5.2 billion yen ($46.8 million), compared to 56.9 billion yen one year ago.
Down under, the S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.9%, with the index led higher by the information technology subindex.
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