Mainland China bucks broader Asia market sell-off; Australia shares close at one-year low

Chinese electric car company Xpeng said this week it plans to roll out driver-assist technology in Europe by the end of next year, and remains on track with plans to expand the tech to 50 cities in China by year-end.

U.S.-based Tesla's version for city streets — called Full Self-Driving Beta — has yet to be released in China and it's unclear how many of the driver-assist features are available in Europe.

Deployment of such tech is subject to regulatory approval.

Xpeng needs time to test and localize its driver-assist software in Europe, Brian Gu, honorary vice chairman of Xpeng's board of directors and co-president, told reporters Wednesday. He declined to provide details on planned availability.

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— Evelyn Cheng

Stock indexes in Japan and South Korea plunged over 2% on Thursday as investors took cues from Wall Street overnight.

Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 2.13%. South Korea's Kospi index slipped 2.20% to its lowest level since early January.

South Korea's Kosdaq index tumbled over 3%. Shares of South Korean tech stocks were also pressured by a 3.63% fall in chipmaker SK Hynix after its announced quarterly results.

Investors also assessed data from South Korea that showed the economy grew at a slightly higher-than-expected pace in the third quarter.

— Shreyashi Sanyal

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 breached its one-year low on Thursday, falling 0.88% in the morning session to hit a low of 6,777.5 points, lower than the 6,785.7 seen on Oct. 28, 2022.

This comes a day after the country's third-quarter inflation rate came in higher than expected.

Separately, the Australian dollar also weakened 0.55% against the U.S. dollar to reach its lowest level in over a year at 0.6275. The next lowest level was recorded at 0.6196 on Oct. 14, 2022.

— Lim Hui Jie

Shares of South Korean chip supplier SK Hynix fell 3.92% after the firm announced a 2.18 trillion won ($1.61 billion) net loss for its third quarter, in contrast to a 1.11 trillion won net profit in the same period a year ago.

Revenue fell 17% year on year to come in at 9.07 trillion won. The company also recorded an operating loss of 1.79 trillion won compared to an operating profit of 1.66 trillion won in the third quarter of 2022.

However, SK Hynix highlighted that on a quarter on quarter basis, its losses narrowed as its net loss and operating loss shrank 27% and 38% respectively compared to the second quarter.

"With the effect of the production reduction by global memory providers starting to be seen and customers, following efforts to reduce inventories, placing new orders now, semiconductor prices are starting to stabilize," the company said.

— Lim Hui Jie

South Korea's economy grew at a slightly faster-than-expected pace in the third quarter, according to data from the Bank of Korea.

Gross domestic product grew 0.6% in the July-September quarter from the prior quarter. A Reuters survey had forecast a median 0.5% increase for the third quarter.

Focus will now move to the Bank of Korea's next policy meeting in late November, where it is to be seen how economic data points like these will impact the central bank's monetary policy decision.

— Shreyashi Sanyal

Investor sentiment around artificial intelligence has soured on the back of the U.S. government's recent export curbs on AI chips — but Goldman Sachs is still bullish.

"While investor sentiment around AI is weaker of late especially following new U.S. regulations, we think global competition could make the introduction of AI to major industries a primary focus," the investment bank's analysts wrote in an Oct. 23 note to investors.

CNBC Pro takes a look at some of the stocks in Goldman's conviction list. They belong to two categories: those that enable AI and those empowered by AI.

Subscribers can read more here.

— Amala Balakrishner

U.S. chipmaker Nvidia has been getting a lot of love from market watchers this year – and growth investor Nick Griffin is no exception.

The founding partner and chief investment officer at the Australia-headquartered Munro Partners says he has "always liked" Nvidia, even while it might be considered "a very difficult stock to own."

Nvidia "is in about 700 ETFs [exchange-traded funds] and it goes all over the shop. I think I said at the start of 2022 that I thought Nvidia would be the biggest company in the world – and it fell 60% that year and has since risen another 300% since then," Griffin said during CNBC's Pro Talks.

Year-to-date, shares in the chipmaker are up nearly 200%, even as it experienced a pullback in the past week following the U.S. government's curbs on the export of artificial intelligence chips to China over concerns they could be used for military development purposes. This will restrict the export of chipmaker Nvidia's A800 and H800 chips, according to the officials.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here.

— Amala Balakrishner

Pershing Square's Bill Ackman pocketed about $200 million from his latest Treasury trade, the Financial Times reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the bet.

The hedge fund manager revealed Monday he covered his bet against 30-year Treasurys, believing that investors may increasingly buy bonds as a safe haven because of growing geopolitical risks.

"There is too much risk in the world to remain short bonds at current long-term rates," Ackman said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday morning. "We covered our bond short."

The firm's flagship fund has rallied 11.6% this year through Oct. 17.

— Yun Li

Alphabet shares sank more than 8%, in its biggest drop in roughly a year, a day after reporting third-quarter Google Cloud revenue that fell short of Wall Street's expectations.

The disappointment from Alphabet coincided with earnings from Microsoft that showed accelerating Azure growth.

Despite beating expectations on the top and bottom lines, the search giant's Google Cloud revenue came in at $8.41 billion, falling short of the $8.64 billion expected by analysts polled by StreetAccount.

— Samantha Subin

Popular technology stocks lagged on Wednesday, dragging down the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite by 1.4% and 2.3%, respectively.

Alphabet shares sank 10% and were on pace for their worst day since March 2020 after reporting cloud revenue that fell short of expectations. Dominant AI chipmaker Nvidia shed 4%, while Amazon dropped 5.5%.

Another contributor to Wednesday's declines was Meta Platforms. The Facebook parent company slated to report earning after the bell slumped 4%. Salesforce and Advanced Micro Devices also lagged, falling 3.7% and 5.5%, respectively. Intel fell 5.3%.

Microsoft managed to buck the broader downtrend, gaining nearly 3% on stronger-than-expected results. Apple and Tesla were on pace for smaller losses, dipped 1.7% and 1%, respectively.

— Samantha Subin

Wednesday's sell-off pushed the S&P 500 below 4,200 — a closely watched technical level on Wall Street. It would be the index's first close below that mark since May 31, when it finished at 4,179.83.

— Fred Imbert