Asian shares skid after tech sell-off on Wall Street

BANGKOK (AP) — Shares dropped Tuesday in Asia after selling of several Big Tech companies pulled U.S. benchmarks lower.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 sank 3.1% and Hong Kong lost 2% while Shanghai advanced.

Despite reassurances from the Federal Reserve and a much weaker than expected U.S. jobs reading last week, investors have refocused on the potential for surging prices to pressure central banks into tapering off on their massive stimulus and ultra-low interest rates, analysts said.

“Investors seem to look past the jobs report and continue to place their focus on the inflation narrative with rising commodities prices and chip shortages in play," Jun Rong Yeap of IG said in a commentary.

China reported its strongest increase in producer prices since October 2017 last month, as supply constraints cascaded into manufacturing.

China's economy was the first to recover from the pandemic and the central bank, or People's Bank of China, has been adjusting policies to keep inflation in check.

The producer price index jumped 6.8% in April from a year earlier, up from a 4.4% increase in March. So far, though, the feed-through to consumer prices is relatively subdued, Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics said in a commentary, adding that “we still doubt that inflation is about to become a key driver of PBOC policy."

The Shanghai Composite index erased early losses Tuesday to gain 0.4% to 3,441.85.

While China's COVID situation has stabilized, a number of Asian countries are seeing rising coronavirus infections and deaths that are straining health systems and setting back progress toward vanquishing the pandemic.

Malaysia's government on Monday ordered a near lockdown for about a month to fight the coronavirus, while allowing businesses to operate at reduced capacity,

Tokyo's...