Asia markets largely negative after sharp decline on Wall Street

Asia markets were largely in negative territory on Friday morning, after a tumble overnight on Wall Street.

The Nikkei 225 made a partial recovery but remained lower by 0.39 percent in the morning, while the Topix index traded down by 0.22 percent, with most sectors still lower.

In South Korea, the Kospi slipped by 0.25 percent in the morning, as shares of heavyweight Samsung Electronics shed some earlier gains but remained up by 0.34 percent. Earlier, the company said its third-quarter operating profit was likely to have risen to a record high.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng index slid by 0.34 percent in the early hours of trading.

Shares of certain Apple suppliers saw declines on the back of a report by Bloomberg BusinessWeek claiming that Chinese spy chips may have been present in hardware used by Amazon Web Services and Apple. Following the report, Aac Technologies, an acoustic components supplier to Apple, saw its shares decline 3.44 percent in the morning.

Down Under, the ASX 200 bucked the overall trend to trade up by 0.31 percent, with the energy sector higher by 0.3 percent. Oil and gas explorer Beach Energy, which had earlier announced the sale of a 40 percent stake in its Victorian Otway gas assets and trimmed its earnings guidance for fiscal year 2019, saw its stock fall 2.97 percent.

Indicative opening prices
DAX: 12,243, or 15 points higher
UKX: 7,435, or 19 points higher
CAC: 5,410, or 4 points higher

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