Hong Kong stocks further weakened yesterday as the market tracked the selloff in the US on Monday, with tech shares leading the decline.

The decline came as Morgan Stanley said that retail investors who bet on tech stocks in the US have lost all the gains they made in the past two years.

The Hang Seng Index once plunged as much as 823 points but narrowed its losses and closed 368.27 points or 1.84 percent lower.

The Hang Seng Tech Index tumbled 3.2 percent, extending its slide into the fifth day.

JD.com (9618) and Alibaba (9988), whose shares shed 8.21 percent and 4.81 percent yesterday, were among the biggest losers.

Meituan's (3690) stock also fell 3.3 percent, although it introduced a series of measures including allowing delivery riders to modify the "simultaneous order receiving quantity" and set their own order limit to ensure riders' safety.

The broad decline tracks a global selloff that intensified after the Federal Reserve hiked rates by 50 basis points last week. Beijing is showing no signs of letup in its stringent Covid Zero policy that's already hurt businesses, and there are growing indications the damage is rippling through the global economy.

Also, US regulators added another 11 companies, including DiDi Global, financial services platform Lufax, and Kingsoft Cloud to an expanding list of firms that face possible expulsion from American exchanges.

Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley said amateur investors who jumped into the US stock market when the Covid lockdown began have now given back all of their once-prodigious gains due to their losses in tech and meme stocks.

"A lot of these guys started trading right around Covid so their only investing experience was the wacked-out, Fed-fueled market," said Matthew Tuttle, chief executive officer at Tuttle Capital Management. "That all changed with the Fed pivot in November, but they didn't realize that because they have never seen a market that wasn't supported by the Fed," he said. "The results have been horrific."

"Retail investors have continued to buy the dip with conviction, while the risk of capitulation remains," Vanda Research's analysts said earlier.

At the same time, US equity-index futures and European stocks climbed as of last night as dip buyers emerged from the ruins of Monday's rout, even though sentiment remained fragile over concerns about inflation and economic growth.

Separately, Dennis Gartman, the chairman of the University of Akron Endowment, said US stocks are and will be in a bear market until a one-day "violent, downward movement" - a 5 or 6 percent drop - signals that prices have reached bottom.

Tech stocks dragged the HSI down yesterday. Sing Tao

HSI dips as US tech loses all pandemic gains