Investing.com - Asian shares fell on Monday as central bank meetings ahead and uncertainty over the chances for a coalition government in Britain turned investors cautious.
Japan's Nikkei 225 was down by 0.56%. Toshiba shares bucked the trend to climb higher on news that Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) would be increasing its bid for Toshiba's memory chip unit to $18 billion or more, Reuters reported. Shares of Toshiba surged 7.31%.
South Korea's benchmark Kospi index fell 0.96% with tech stocks weaker on a fallout from Wall Street.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index fell 1.22% and the Shanghai Composite dipped 0.45%. Markets in Australia, Malaysia and the Philippines are closed today for public holidays. Investing.com's Fed rate monitor tool widely sees a rate hike by the Fed.
Last week, U.S. stocks pared gains to close mostly lower, as a slump in tech stocks weighed on overall performance, while a surprise result from yesterday’s UK general election had a muted effect on sentiment.
Investors ditched tech stocks in the late afternoon U.S. session, as the Nasdaq fell more than 2%, after Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) released a report warning investors about the lofty valuation and low volatility of the top-five tech leaders, known as the FAAMG — for Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL).
“This outperformance, driven by secular growth and the death of the reflation narrative, has created positioning extremes, factor crowding and difficult-to-decipher risk narratives (e.g. FAAMG’s realized volatility is now below that of Staples and Utilities.” Goldman Sachs said in a note to clients.
However, the slump in tech stocks was offset by a rise in financials, mostly banks, spurred by investor optimism that the sector would advance, after parts of the post-crisis Dodd-Frank financial regulations were tapered on Thursday.
The US House of Representatives on Thursday, passed legislation to roll back parts of the Obama-era, post-crisis Dodd-Frank financial regulations.
Meanwhile, a surprise result in the UK general election, which saw UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative party fail to secure enough seats to form a majority in Parliament drew a muted reaction from U.S. equities.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed higher at 21,271.697. The S&P 500 lost 0.08% while the Nasdaq Composite closed at 6207.92, down 1.8%.