[MARKET ANALYSIS] APAC stocks fail to follow Wall Street's AI rebound; KOSPI extends October rout

APAC Stocks: Negative

• Asia-Pac stocks trade with losses despite the rebound on Wall Street, where the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 gained as AI concerns eased over the weekend, although breadth stateside was poor outside of AI names. The APAC region failed to sustain the tech-led recovery, with chip-heavy markets in Japan and South Korea leading the declines.

ASX 200: -0.6%

• Index declined with gold miners pressured following the pullback in the precious metal, while financials were in focus after S&P downgraded Bank of Queensland's long-term rating to BBB+ from A-, and Westpac flagged an AUD 41mln notable item related to RAMS litigation ahead of its FY results on 2nd November.

Nikkei 225: -0.9%

• Pressured as tech names failed to benefit from the AI-led rebound stateside, while SoftBank was in focus following reports that it is in discussions to participate in OpenAI's private funding round ahead of Anthropic's IPO.

KOSPI: -3.0%

• The regional laggard, extending its October rout after the index fell over 17% in the first half of the month, the steepest decline among major global markets. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix were pressured amid reports that US big tech firms, including Apple and Tesla, are pushing for lower memory prices by citing Chinese suppliers CXMT and YMTC as alternatives.

Hang Seng & Shanghai Comp: Hang Seng -0.3% / Shanghai Comp -0.6%

• Chinese markets are mildly lower in line with the broader risk tone, as Hong Kong returns from Monday's Chung Yeung holiday. Losses are cushioned by Beijing's efforts to support the stock market, including the CSRC's approval of 18 actively managed ETFs that could channel tens of billions of yuan into A-shares, while PBoC maintained its LPRs as expected, and Governor Pan said the overnight reverse repo rate will become the main policy rate.

US Equity Futures: Mixed

• Price action is contained following yesterday's AI-led gains, with NQ (-0.2%) slightly lagging ES (+0.1%) and YM (+0.2%), while attention turns to earnings from Netflix, GE Aerospace, General Motors and RTX later today, ahead of Tesla and Meta on Wednesday.

European Equity Futures: -0.6%

• Indicate a negative cash market open, with Euro Stoxx 50 futures down 0.6% after the cash market closed with losses of 0.9% on Monday, amid the civil unrest in France and across Europe and elevated Dutch TTF prices.

Sessions in which APAC fails to follow a US tech rebound are a familiar pattern when the Wall Street move is narrow, since thin breadth in the prior session's leadership historically gives Asian chip-heavy indices little to latch onto; Japan and Korea underperforming while broader markets hold up is the standard signature of that setup. The KOSPI leg is the sharper thread: a decline of the size cited here in half a month places it among the more severe regional corrections of its kind, and the reported push by US buyers to cite Chinese memory suppliers as pricing alternatives fits the established playbook in DRAM cycles, where customer leverage narratives tend to compress Korean supplier margins well before contract prices actually reset. The Seoul question is whether this stays a pricing-leverage story or becomes a share-loss story, the former historically mean-reverting once memory spot quotes stabilise. The PBoC framing around elevating the overnight reverse repo rate to main policy rate status continues a shift toward a single short-rate anchor of the sort other major central banks use, and its practical tell is whether LPR decisions start moving independently of MLF. The SoftBank and OpenAI thread keeps private AI funding circularity in view, a recurring source of single-name volatility in Japan. Near-term calendar risk sits with the listed US earnings, which have been the swing factor for whether the AI rebound broadens or stays concentrated.