TOKYO: Japan’s Nikkei share average dropped more than 1 percent on Monday as tech stocks tracked their Wall Street peers lower on lingering worries over stretched valuations.
The Nikkei slid 1.3 percent to end the day at 50,168.11, with artificial intelligence (AI)-focused startup investor SoftBank Group and chip-testing-tool maker Advantest - an Nvidia supplier - the biggest drags on the index by a wide margin.
The broader, less tech-heavy Topix, by contrast, rose 0.2 percent to 3,431.47.
Of the Nikkei’s 225 components, risers outnumbered fallers by 130 to 94, with one share ending flat.
“This is not broad-based weakness in stocks across sectors,” said Nomura Securities strategist Fumika Shimizu.
“It feels like a sector rotation” away from the big tech shares that have performed so strongly this year, she said.
SoftBank Group slumped 6 percent and Advantest tumbled 6.4 percent, between them accounting for about 560 points of the Nikkei’s total 668-point slide. Fujikura, another darling of the AI trade in Japan, dropped 4.4 percent.
On Friday, the Philadelphia SE semiconductor index plunged more than 5 percent, with investors leaving technology for other sectors amid concerns about an AI bubble.
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