[MARKET ANALYSIS] APAC stocks fail to follow Wall Street's AI rebound; KOSPI extends October rout

APAC Stocks: Negative Asia-Pac stocks trade with losses despite the rebound on Wall Street, where the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 gained as AI concerns eased over the weekend, although breadth stateside was poor outside of AI names. The APAC region failed to sustain the tech-led recovery, with chip-heavy markets in Japan and South Korea leading the declines. ASX 200: -0.6% Index declined with gold miners pressured following the pullback in the precious metal, while financials were in focus after S&P downgraded Bank of Queensland's long-term rating to BBB+ from A-, and Westpac flagged an AUD 41mln notable item related to RAMS litigation ahead of its FY results on 2nd November. Nikkei 225: -0.9% Pressured as tech names failed to benefit from the AI-led rebound stateside, while SoftBank was in focus following reports that it is in discussions to participate in OpenAI's private funding round ahead of Anthropic's IPO. KOSPI: -3.0% The regional laggard, extending its October rout after the index fell over 17% in the first half of the month, the steepest decline among major global markets. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix were pressured amid reports that US big tech firms, including Apple and Tesla, are pushing for lower memory prices by citing Chinese suppliers CXMT and YMTC as alternatives. Hang Seng & Shanghai Comp: Hang Seng -0.3% / Shanghai Comp -0.6% Chinese markets are mildly lower in line with the broader risk tone, as Hong Kong returns from Monday's Chung Yeung holiday. Losses are cushioned by Beijing's efforts to support the stock market, including the CSRC's approval of 18 actively managed ETFs that could channel tens of billions of yuan into A-shares, while PBoC maintained its LPRs as expected, and Governor Pan said the overnight reverse repo rate will become the main policy rate. US Equity Futures: Mixed Price action is contained following yesterday's AI-led gains, with NQ (-0.2%) slightly lagging ES (+0.1%) and YM (+0.2%), while attention turns to earnings from Netflix, GE Aerospace, General Motors and RTX later today, ahead of Tesla and Meta on Wednesday. European Equity Futures: -0.6% Indicate a negative cash market open, with Euro Stoxx 50 futures down 0.6% after the cash market closed with losses of 0.9% on Monday, amid the civil unrest in France and across Europe and elevated Dutch TTF prices.