Asia-Pacific markets mostly higher after U.S. tech sell-off

Asia-Pacific markets mostly rose Tuesday, while investors sold-off U.S. Big Tech stocks overnight in favor of sectors such as banking and energy.

Tech darling Nvidia dropped 6.7% on Monday and was one of the biggest contributors to the Nasdaq’s losses. Information technology was the S&P 500’s worst-performing sector, down more than 2%.

Investors in Asia assessed South Korea’s consumer sentiment index for June, as well as Japan’s service sector producer prices.

The services producer price index for Japan climbed 2.5% year on year in May, compared with the 2.7% rise in April.

South Korea’s consumer confidence index climbed in June to 100.9 from 98.4 in May. This comes amid growing optimism about living standards and future household income, as well as domestic economic conditions.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 gained 0.51% while the broad-based Topix rose 1.44%.

South Korea’s Kospi gained 0.42% while the small-cap Kosdaq reversed gains to a 0.52% drop.

The Taiwan Weighted Index pared some losses and was last down 0.29%.

Hong Kong Hang Seng index was up 0.74% while mainland China’s CSI 300 advanced 0.16%.

Reuters reported the Biden administration is probing three Chinese telecommunications firms over worries that Beijing could access American data through these firms’ cloud and internet businesses in the U.S.

All three firms named in the Reuters report – China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom – gained in morning trade.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.92%.