By Tom Wilson
LONDON, Sept 4 (Reuters) – Shares fell globally on Wednesday, hit by a rout in technology stocks triggered by a record sell-off by U.S. chipmaker Nvidia and as expectations of slower global growth weighed on riskier assets.
* European stocks fell 1%, with London, Paris and Frankfurt markets losing between 0.6% and 0.9%. Semiconductor companies were the biggest losers, with ASML Holdings down 5.4%.
* The trend looked set to extend to Wall Street, where stock futures extended their losses. S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures were down 0.4% and 0.5% respectively.
* Wall Street closed sharply lower on Tuesday, with artificial intelligence darling Nvidia plunging by a record $279 billion as investors revised their enthusiasm for AI-related stocks.
* MSCI’s world equity index, which tracks shares in 47 countries, fell 0.5%.
* September has historically been a bad month for stocks, although analysts pointed to a confluence of factors behind the decline, including weak U.S. manufacturing data.
* Crude oil futures reversed course and rose, with Brent up 0.66% at $74.23 a barrel, while U.S. crude gained 0.82% to $70.91. They fell nearly 5% on Tuesday.
* Earlier, stock indexes in Tokyo and Taipei led declines in Asia, each down more than 4%. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan lost 1.9%.
* The Japanese yen rose 0.4 percent to 144.90 per dollar, helped by falling stock prices.
* The dollar index was stable, supported by safe-haven sentiment.
* The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yield fell nearly two basis points to 3.82%, while the two-year yield fell to 3.84%.
(Reporting by Tom Wilson in London; additional reporting by Dhara Rhanasinghe in London, Rae Wee in Singapore and Tom Westbrook in Sydney; Editing by Ricardo Figueroa)
