Asian stocks plunge as global market sell-off deepens

Asian markets slipped further on Friday, bringing more losses for investors across most of the region as governments and central banks scrambled to respond in the wake of Wall Street’s biggest plunge in more than 30 years.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei Stock Average plummeted 10% at one point, recording the biggest single-day drop since April 1990, before the collapse of the country’s economic bubble. Markets in Hong Kong, China and South Korea also fell sharply, while money also flooded out of smaller Asian emerging markets. The scale of losses caused automatic “circuit breakers” to halt trading in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.

However the rout in Asia eased in later trading on Friday and some markets staged gains. The gyrations came after a historic fall on U.S. markets on Thursday when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell almost 10%, its biggest daily loss since 1987.