Asia stock markets slide as tech shares slump

Asian stock markets fell sharply on Friday, led by a sell-off in technology firms as investors worried that recent jumps in share prices had gone too far. Trading on South Korea's Kospi was temporarily halted as an 8% fall in the benchmark index triggered a mechanism intended to curb panic selling. The index closed 5.8% lower. It comes after shares in Apple fell sharply on Thursday after it announced it would raise the prices of its iPads and MacBooks due to the soaring cost of computer chips. Some investors are also concerned about the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent this year by big tech firms to build artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. Traders are reassessing the valuations of tech stocks, while some are taking profits after a rally in recent months, said senior partner David Makaryan from the Alpha Pacific Group, an investment firm. "The long term investment case for AI remains compelling, but investors are becoming far more selective about which companies can justify the valuations the market has assigned to them," Makaryan said. Elsewhere in Asia, Japan's Nikkei 225 closed more than 4% lower as shares in technology investment giant SoftBank fell by 12.5%