Verdict Day: The Market Opens Below Every Line It Drew This Week

Signal week, verdict day — companion to this morning's Morning 10, written as the US premarket runs and before New York opens. The close, not the open, is the verdict.

Overnight: the selloff went global

Tokyo answered Thursday's New York session with the week's heaviest tape: the Nikkei fell more than 4,100 points at the afternoon worst — down 6.2%, under 63,000 — and closed off 4.7% at 63,674. The epicenter was the same one it has been all week: memory. Kioxia dove as much as 16%, and its market value has now roughly halved from last month's peak; the framing making the rounds in Tokyo is not about earnings but about leverage — positions built against AI names being unwound. Taipei followed: the Taiex lost 4.9% to 43,399 the day after TSMC printed the strongest quarter of its history — though TSMC itself fell only 3.4% at home, outperforming its own index, relative strength on the record it just delivered. Seoul didn't trade at all, which means the one market where the memory chain lives reopens Monday with all of Friday still unpriced.