U.S. stock futures tumbled, wiping out half of the furious last-hour rally Friday and tripping exchange trading curbs, as investors worried that emergency measures by the Federal Reserve will fall short of cushioning the coronavirus’s blows to the economy.

Contracts on the S&P5 500, whose violent swings have now triggered limits in five of the past six sessions, dropped 4.8% to 2,555.50 as of 6:50 p.m. in New York. While the triggering of limit-down circuit breakers arrests big drops, it also leaves traders in the dark as to the full extent of losses. Last week, investors had to wait till the 4 a.m. start of premarket trading in New York to see how far exchange-traded funds tracking major benchmarks had declined.

MAINBOARD-LISTED Tee International on Sunday said that it has implemented a slew of measures to tighten internal control policies and raise its level of corporate governance. This comes after Tee's former group chief executive Phua Chian Kin had earlier admitted to taking company funds to repay his own debts and satisfy margin calls between July 2018 and October last year.

Tokyo's key Nikkei stocks index opened higher but immediately drifted lower on Monday, as investors waited for the results of an emergency policy meeting at the Bank of Japan later in the day. The Nikkei 225 index lost 0.68 per cent or 117.75 points to 17,313.30 in the first few minutes of trade while the broader Topix index was down 0.31 per cent or 3.87 points at 1,257.83.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) lowered its base rate charged through the overnight discount window to 0.86 per cent on Monday, after the US Federal Reserve delivered a rate cut.

Federal Reserve slashes key interest rate, rolls out massive response to pandemic. The Fed made its second emergency rate cut in less than two weeks, cutting the benchmark borrowing rate to a range of 0-0.25 per cent, where it was during the 2008 global financial crisis, and pledged to keep it there "until it is confident that the economy has weathered recent events."

The German government promised on Sunday to defend itself against alleged attempts by US president Donald Trump to buy exclusive rights to a German company's research into a vaccine against the coronavirus.

The Bank of Japan will strive to maintain smooth market functioning even though no specific country, region or financial institutions are facing difficulty procuring funds now, a BOJ official said on Monday.

Source: SGX Masnet, The Business Times, Bloomberg, Channel NewsAsia, Reuters, PSR