Nikkei 225 Plunges Below 37,900 Amid Broad Sector Weakness; Wall Street Mixed as Nasdaq and S P 500 Slump

Tokyo's stock market experienced a significant downturn on Wednesday, with the Nikkei 225 Index falling below the 37,900 level, a 0.93 percent decrease to 37,882.19. This decline follows mixed signals from Wall Street and is driven by widespread weakness in index heavyweights and financial stocks. SoftBank Group is down almost 3 percent, and Fast Retailing edged down 0.2 percent. Major banks like Sumitomo Mitsui Financial and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial are down 1.5 and almost 2 percent, respectively. On Wall Street, the Nasdaq plunged 1.4 percent to a three-month low, and the S&P 500 slid 0.5 percent to a one-month low. The Dow, however, bucked the trend, climbing 0.4 percent. European markets showed mixed performance, with the UK's FTSE 100 up 0.1 percent, while the German DAX and French CAC 40 fell by 0.1 and 0.5 percent, respectively. Crude oil prices also settled sharply lower, down $1.77 to $68.93 a barrel.