Asia's Bailout Brigade: Taiwan Curbs Shorts, Readies $15BN Fund As Seoul Waives Margin Calls To Stop The AI Rout It took just a few hours long for the AI unwind to go from a Wall Street problem to an Asian government problem. After the post-midterm "sell everything" day in which the Nasdaq suffered its worst day since Covid and the SOX plunged 12%, Asia opened on Friday into a liquidation: Taiwan's Taiex plunged as much as 9% and entered a bear market, Korea's Kospi crashed as much as 8.8%, tripping a 20-minute market-wide halt and briefly breaking below 5,000, and the Nikkei joined the bear market club with a 6% drop.
By the time Europe woke up, both Taipei and Seoul had pulled the emergency brake . In Taiwan, according to Bloomberg , the Financial Supervisory Commission will impose curbs on short selling from Nov. 9, while the Finance Ministry said it is prepared to deploy its NT$500 billion ($15 billion) stock stabilization fund .