Circuit breaker again? Nasdaq futures plummet nearly 5%! Japanese and South Korean stock markets plunge 10%!

The US stock market's night session saw an expanded decline, with S&P 500 index futures falling by 3% and NASDAQ index futures plummeting by about 5%.

Weighted stocks experienced sharp declines during the night session, with NVIDIA plunging by 12%, Tesla plummeting by nearly 11%, Apple dropping by 8.5%, and Microsoft falling by 6.8%.

At the same time, the panic index VIX surged, with the 2x Long VIX Futures ETF VIXY skyrocketing by over 20%.

In the Asian stock markets, the Hang Seng Index saw an expanded decline in the afternoon, currently down by about 2.8%, while the three major A-share indexes dropped by over 1%.

The Japan TOPIX index plummeted by 11%, triggering a circuit breaker at one point, and the Nikkei 225 index also fell by 10%.

The South Korean stock market also experienced a sharp decline, with the KOSPI index plunging by over 8%.

It is understood that various factors resonated to cause a global stock market crash: important data in the US, such as non-farm payrolls, falling significantly below expectations leading to recession concerns, Japan's interest rate hike causing continuous plunges in Japanese stocks, some weighted stocks reporting lower-than-expected earnings, geopolitical tensions, and Warren Buffett significantly reducing his holdings in Apple, among others.

The extent of the US stock market's decline during the Asian session is rare, raising concerns in the market that extreme circuit breaker scenarios may occur in the US stock market tonight.

US Stock Market Circuit Breaker Mechanism:

The benchmark index for the US index circuit breaker mechanism is the S&P 500, with single-day decline thresholds set at 7%, 13%, and 20%. When the index falls by 7% or 13% compared to the previous day's closing level, trading across all US securities markets will be halted for 15 minutes. If the index falls by 20% compared to the previous day's closing level, trading for that day will be halted. In addition, individual stock circuit breakers were implemented in the US stock market in 2010.

The circuit breaker mechanism was first proposed by the New York Stock Exchange in the US in 1987 to prevent stock disasters similar to "Black Monday". At that time, the circuit breaker mechanism only applied to major index plunges.

In March 2020, the US stock market experienced four circuit breakers.

On March 9, 2020, the S&P 500 index fell by 7% after the opening, triggering the first level of circuit breaker.

On March 12, 2020, the S&P 500 index fell by over 7% shortly after the opening, triggering the first level of circuit breaker again.

On March 16, 2020, the S&P 500 index opened with a drop of 220.60 points, a decline of 8.14%, triggering the third circuit breaker of that monthOn March 18, 2020, the S&P 500 Index fell 177.29 points intraday, a decrease of 7.01%, triggering the fourth circuit breaker of the month