The Wall Street Journal reports, "Japanese stocks tumbled almost 3% on Friday, with the Nikkei on track for its worst week since August, as evidence that China's economy is slowing sharply and rising tensions in Ukraine fuel a broad selloff in Asia in recent days.
The Nikkei lost 2.7% in early trade, with the market weighed by a yen that had strengthened substantially overnight, and continued to pull down markets. The dollar fell 0.9% overnight against the yen, its largest daily fall since early February, and stabilized in Asia at ¥101.81".
Slower-than-expected growth in Chinese industrial production and retail sales came out just before some markets closed in the previous session, giving Japan and South Korea little time to react. But by Friday morning, markets in Wall Street had suffered their worst day since February, in part due to the bad news from China, as well as continued tensions over Ukraine and Russia, which left Asia vulnerable to a selloff.
It was a similar story in Australia, where stocks stopped trading on Thursday before the Chinese data was released. On Friday, the S&P/ASX 200 fell 1.4%.
South Korea's Kospi was down 0.7%.
Trading in Asia all week has been centered on developments in China. Data out over the weekend showed a sharp decline in exports in February, raising concerns over the health of the world's second-largest economy. There were also jitters in the corporate sector, with fears that another solar company could default, just a week after China experienced its first default in its corporate debt market.
Markets dislike uncertanty.
This has translated into poor performance for the week, especially for markets linked to China. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index is 4% lower since last Friday and the S&P/ASX 200—a market heavy with resource companies that sell to China—fell 2.3%. It was Japan, a market that has been particularly volatile in recent weeks, that was affected the most from the downbeat sentiment, and the Nikkei was down 5.6% over the same period.
