Major Asian stocks witnessed a bloodbath today, hitting multi-year lows, as concerns over a potential global recession intensified amid escalating trade conflict between the world’s two largest economies, the US and China. Meanwhile, the massive sell-off was also triggered by US President Donald Trump’s comments that he does not want anything to go down but stressed, “Sometimes medicines need to be taken to fix something.” He also indicated that no deal with China would happen until the US trade deficit was fixed.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index crashed over 15.2 per cent, Japan’s Nikkei plunged almost 8.5 per cent, Singapore’s Strait Times index collapsed over eight per cent, China’s Shanghai Composite index tumbled over 7.9 per cent, and South Korea’s Kospi slipped almost 5.9 per cent.

Major European indices were trading sharply lower. France’s CAC 40 was trading over 4.2 per cent down, London’s FTSE 100 declined over 4.1 per cent, and Germany’s DAX shed over four per cent when reports last came in.