Asian shares stumbled on Tuesday after a rout in tech stocks inflicted a hefty sell-off on Wall Street, while the dollar hit a 16-month peak on safe haven bets amid political risks in Europe and acrimonious Sino-U.S. trade relations.

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MSCI`s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.4 percent to a 1-1/2 week trough, with Australian and New Zealand shares opening sharply lower.

The Asia ex-Japan index is down 15.5 percent so far this year, after a solid 33.5 percent gain in 2017, with October the worst month since mid-2015.

Concerns about a slowdown in China and the Asian region more broadly due to U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods had spooked investors, sparking the largest monthly foreign outflows from Asia last month since August 2011, said Khoon Goh, Singapore-based head of Asia research for ANZ Banking Group.

Funds returned over the early part of November on hopes that U.S.-China tensions would ease, Goh added, with the focus squarely on a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping later this month.

"The outcome of the meeting will have an important influence on portfolio flows in Asia into the end of the year," Goh added.

Worryingly, the Trump administration is broadening its China trade battle beyond tariffs with a plan to use export controls, indictments and other tools to counter the theft of intellectual property, the Wall Street Journal reported citing sources.

Asian markets have also been hammered as risk assets have been hurt by rising U.S. interest rates.

Overnight in Wall Street, major U.S. stock indexes dropped more than 1 percent, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq slumping over 2 percent. Indexes were weighed down by a 4.3 percent slump in index heavyweight Apple https://tmsnrt.rs/2zpUAr4)

(This article has not been edited by Zeebiz editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)