* Wall Street tumbles as inflation fears nag
* Nasdaq in biggest one-day decline in four months
* Oil prices settle up
* Reuters Live Markets blog: LIVE/
By Echo Wang
MIAMI, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Asian stocks opened sharply lower
on Friday after Wall Street's main indexes tumbled, with
technology-related stocks under pressure following a steep rise
in benchmark U.S. Treasury yields.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 .AXJO fell 2% in early trade, on
track for the biggest intraday percentage loss since Jan. 28.
Japan's Nikkei 225 .N225 was down 1.8% while Hong Kong's Hang
Seng index futures .HSI HSIc1 lost 1.69%.
U.S. Treasury yields vaulted to their highest since the
pandemic began on expectations of a strong economic expansion
and related inflation. The bond sell-off accelerated after a
disappointing auction of seven-year notes at midday.
"Fed officials aren't stepping in the way of yield moves and
are taking them as a signal of growing optimism in the
recovery," said Tapas Strickland in a research note, a director
of economics and markets at National Australia Bank.
U.S. stocks tumbled, forcing a decline in European equities
that had rallied earlier on a bigger rise than expected in euro
zone economic sentiment data for February. Apple Inc AAPL.O , Tesla Inc TSLA.O , Amazon.com Inc
AMZN.O , NVIDIA Corp NVDA.O and Microsoft Corp MSFT.O were
the biggest drags on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq.
MSCI's all-country world index .MIWD00000PUS fell 0.23%,
also pulled down by the big U.S. tech names that make up a large
component of the global stock benchmark.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell
1.75%, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 2.45% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq
Composite .IXIC dropped 3.52%, the biggest single-day decline
in almost four months for the tech-heavy index.
Bond trading pushed up a closely watched part of the
Treasury yield curve that measures the difference between yields
on two- and 10-year notes US2US10=RR . The gap, seen as an
indicator of economic expectations, widened as much as 141 basis
points, the most since 2015.
The 10-year Treasury US10YT=RR note was up 14 basis points
to yield 1.5286% in late afternoon trade, prompting investors
concerned about rich valuations to lock in profits on some
high-flying growth stocks.
The dollar index rose 0.173%, lifting off a seven-week low
while the safe-haven Japanese yen, which tends to underperform
when global growth improves, weakened 0.06% versus the greenback
at 106.28 per dollar.
Oil prices held near 13-month highs, with profit-taking
limited by assurance that U.S. interest rates will stay low and
a sharp drop in U.S. crude output last week due to the winter
storm in Texas.
U.S. crude CLc1 recently fell 0.27% to $63.36 per barrel
and Brent LCOc1 was at $67.08, up 0.06% on the day.
Spot gold XAU= added 0.1% to $1,771.71 an ounce. U.S. gold
futures GCc1 fell 0.36% to $1,768.00 an ounce.
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Emerging markets http://tmsnrt.rs/2ihRugV
Global asset performance http://tmsnrt.rs/2yaDPgn
Up and away: global bond yields on the rise https://tmsnrt.rs/3kesTqW
Commodity currencies on the charge https://tmsnrt.rs/2P5O5nr
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