Asian stocks stumble as 'dollar juggernaut' on a roll
tech shares tumbling on deepening Sino-U.S. tensions, while the dollar was set to seal its longest winning streak in nine years as investors braced for U.S. interest rates to stay higher for longer.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.2% in early trade and is down 1.4% for the week.
Hong Kong markets were closed for the morning due to storms lashing the city. Japan's Nikkei fell 0.8%.
Some $200 billion has been wiped from Apple's market capitalisation in two days on reports of China curbing iPhone use by state employees and on Friday protectionism fears were weighing on shares of chip suppliers in Asia.
Shares in Taiwan's TSMC, a big Apple supplier, fell 1% at the open. Shares in South Korea's SK Hynix, whose chips some users have found in China's Huawei Technologies' new phone, fell as much as 4.5% to a two-week low.
Tokyo Electron shares dropped 4.3%.
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«China's partial ban on Apple products put trade wars and U.S.-China decoupling back on the agenda,» said Capital.com analyst Kyle Rodda. «The ban is narrow in scope...however, it illustrated the two-way costs and risks of de-coupling.»
U.S. suppliers' shares had fallen overnight and helped drag the S&P 500 0.3% lower and the Nasdaq down by 0.9%.
S&P 500 futures were flat in Asia on Friday.
The selling also came while tech stocks have been under extra pressure from U.S. yields that have been rising on bets that U.S. interest rates are likely to linger at 20-year highs.
That in turn has unleashed the dollar, which is up for an eighth straight week against a basket of currencies, a rally that has carried the U.S.
