Nikkei plunges over 3%, leading losses in Asia after Wall Street plummets on weak U.S. data

Asia-Pacific markets plunged on Wednesday, tracking losses on Wall Street after and tech stocks sold off and weak U.S. economic data sparked recession fears.

Chipmaker Nvidia lost over 9% in regular trading, dragging other counterparts along with it, such as Intel, AMD and Marvell.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH), an index that tracks semiconductor stocks, was down 7.5%, its worst day since March 2020.

Separately, the ISM manufacturing index for August came in at 47.2% for the month, up 0.4 percentage points from July, but below the 47.9% expected from Dow Jones. The gauge measures the percentage of companies reporting expansion, so anything below 50% represents contraction.

In Asia, investors will be watching for any spillover from Nvidia’s sell off, especially among Nvidia’s suppliers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down over 3.26%, leading losses in Asia, while the broad based Topix was down 2.97%

South Korea’s Kospi lost 2.29% on its open, as well as the small cap Kosdaq, which saw a 2.60% loss.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.91%.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index futures were at 17,487, lower than the HSI’s last close of 17,651.49.

In the U.S., all three major indexes recorded their worst days since the Aug. 5 global sell-off. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.51% and the S&P 500 down 2.12%. The Nasdaq Composite saw the largest loss, tumbling 3.26%.

—CNBC’s Fred Imbert and Alex Harring contributed to this report.