Australian shares are headed for another tumble this morning as global investor sentiment took a dive overnight.
The biggest drop was felt by Tokyo's Nikkei, which was down 1.4 per cent.
Hong Kong, Shanghai, as well as European markets (London, Frankfurt and Paris) all fell by about 1 per cent each.
Worst day in eight months
On Wall Street, it looked much the same — with 405 of the S&P 500 companies posting losses.
Nearly every S&P sector was sold-off, with the worst performers being healthcare (-2.1pc), energy (-1.9pc), technology (-1pc) and financials (-0.9.pc).
Technology stocks continued their losing streak, with Apple shares down another 1 per cent — over fears the company would cut production of its iPhone X for the first quarter of 2018.
Rising bond yields were another reason for the sell-off on Wall Street.
Interest rates on US 10-year government bonds rose to 2.72 per cent, its highest level in almost four years, amid concerns about higher inflation.
The Dow Jones dropped by 363 points, or 1.4 per cent, its biggest fall in eight months.
The S&P 500 slipped 1.1 per cent (its worst day since August), while the Nasdaq shed 0.9 per cent.
CBOE's volatility index (VIX), which measures fear in the stock market, rose to 14.57, its highest level since August.
Healthcare sunk by Buffett and co
Health stocks were hit hard after Amazon, JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway announced they would join forces to start a new healthcare company— to lower healthcare costs for their hundreds of thousands of US employees.
The industry titans said this venture will be "free from profit-making incentives and constraints" as they take on the inefficient and expensive American healthcare system.
"The ballooning costs of healthcare act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy," said Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway's chairman and CEO.
"Our group does not come to this problem with answers. But we also do not accept it as inevitable."
In a statement, Berkshire said the initial focus of the joint venture will be on "technology solutions" to bring about simplified and cheaper healthcare.
Eyes on inflation
In local economic news, the Bureau of Statistics will release its consumer price index for the December quarter.
Reuters-polled economists expected the price of consumer goods and services to have risen by 0.7 per cent in the last three months of 2017.
This would bring headline inflation to 2 per cent for the year.
The Australian dollar was weaker across the board, falling 0.1 per cent to 80.8 US cents.
It also dropped against the British pound (-0.6pc), euro (-0.2pc), Japanese yen (-0.3pc) and New Zealand dollar (-0.2pc).
