[MARKET ANALYSIS] Asia-Pac stocks sink amid tech bloodbath

Cross-asset sell-offs that originate in a US tech rout compounded by a hot inflation print tend to transmit to Asia through a fairly mechanical sequence: the highest-beta, most foreign-owned tech indices take the largest mark-to-market hit, which is the established pattern behind the outsized moves in the Nikkei and KOSPI relative to the ASX, where financials and defensives cushion the tape. The distinction worth drawing within the session is between pure multiple compression in crowded growth names and a broader risk repricing: the former stays concentrated in semiconductors and platform stocks and leaves banks and defensives bid, the latter drags credit spreads, metals and the front end of rate curves along with it. Weak domestic labour data partially decoupling the ASX from the move illustrates the standard offset, since soft local prints reduce domestic tightening risk even as global duration sells off. The follow-ons that have historically mattered in episodes of this kind are whether US futures stabilise into the European cash open, whether the selling stays confined to the tech complex or broadens into value and small caps, and the next central bank communications given the hot CPI read. As a session wrap rather than fresh information, the note's value is in mapping where the stress is concentrated rather than in signalling its next leg.