Asia-Pacific markets mostly fall on penultimate day of the year
Investors will be focused on China's military exercises around Taiwan today, after it announced new drills surrounding the island Monday.
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Aerial view by drone of Tokyo Cityscape with Tokyo Sky Tree visible in Tokyo city, Japan on sunrise.
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Asia-Pacific markets mostly fell Tuesday, after the tech sell-down on Wall Street continued on AI bubble fears.
Nvidia shares dropped more than 1% Monday stateside, giving back some of its more than 5% gain in last week's period. Palantir Technologies and Meta Platforms also suffered losses, as did Oracle.
Japan's Nikkei 225 was down 0.26%, while the broad-based Topix was 0.27% lower.
Shares of Softbank Group Corp slipped over 2% before paring some losses, after the company announced a deal late Monday to buy data center investment firm DigitalBridge for $4 billion as part of its artificial intelligence push.
SoftBank CEO and Chairman Masayoshi Son said the acquisition "will strengthen the foundation for next-generation AI data centers" and advance the firm's vision to become a leading "Artificial Super Intelligence" platform provider. Shares of DigitalBridge jumped about 10% after the announcement.
South Korea's Kospi was flat, while the small-cap Kosdaq declined 0.99%, leading losses in Asia.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng index bucked the trend and rose 0.41%, while the CSI 300 in mainland China was flat.
Investors will be focused on China's military exercises around Taiwan, after the world's second-largest economy announced new drills surrounding the island Monday.
Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te said that Taiwan will "act responsibly and not escalate conflict," but also said that the "frequent escalation of military pressure" by China was not something a responsible power should do.
The Taiwan Weighted Index fell 0.1%, with major tech names like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Hon Hai down about 1%.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was flat, after registering gains earlier in the day.
U.S. futures were little changed in early Asian hours.
Overnight in the U.S., the S&P 500 dropped 0.35%, while the Nasdaq Composite shed 0.50%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average pulled back by 0.51%.
Traders will be looking for home price data due Tuesday stateside at 9 a.m. ET, and the Federal Reserve's December meeting minutes at 2 p.m. ET.
—CNBC's Sean Conlon and Fred Imbert contributed to this report.
