Asia

Markets were thrown for a loop in the past 24 hours, with the Dow first soaring nearly 400 points on Thursday on expectations that tax reform was a done deal, when drama emerged just after the close when the Senate tax bill came this close to falling apart when the proposed "Trigger" was ruled as invalid, pushing a Thursday tax vote to this morning, and as of this moment the bill appears in limbo with the GOP scrambling to find ways to appease the sudden loud opposition among budget hawks. UBS economist Paul Donovan summarized it best this morning:

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

With its focus on Central Asia and Eastern Europe, the Belt and Road Initiative can be seen as fulfilling a strategy of challenging the West that can be traced back to Mao...

Authored by Michael Hudson via Counterpunch.org,

In theory, the global financial system is supposed to help every country gain. Mainstream teaching of international finance, trade and “foreign aid” (defined simply as any government credit) depicts an almost utopian system uplifting all countries, not stripping their assets and imposing austerity.

Despite a Wednesday dive in high-flying U.S. tech stocks on worries their boom may have peaked following a MS downgrade, which presured Asian stocks leading to a slide in Hong Kong and South Korean share, on Thursday morning the dip buyers have emerged and both European stocks and US equity futures are once again solidly in the green as yesterday's tech selloff is quickly forgotten.

While FANGs cratered in US markets, the turmoil in tech stocks has spread to AsiaPac with Hong Kong down hard as TATS tumble to one-month lows at the open...

Asia's "FANG"  equivalent - accounting for 16% of MSCI Emerging Market Stock index is TATS - Taiwan Semi, Alibaba, Tecent, and Samsung...

All four names are down notably in the last week...

Following the biggest tumble in South Korea Industrial Production (and the first rate hike by Bank of Korea in 6 years), it appears there are no dip-buyers yet. KOSPI is down at one-month lows...