SYDNEY, Australia - Stocks in Asia steadied on Wednesday, after a rout on Wall Street overnight.

Bourses across the region lost ground, however selling was moderate, leading to modest declines in most indices.

Hong Kong stocks did worst, dropping 440.76 points or 1.62% to 26,819.68.

In Japan the Nikkei 225 fell 116.72 points or 0.53% to 21,919.33.

Chins, which saw stocks rise a day earlier, gave up some of those gains. The key Shanghai Composite index lost 16.15 points or 0.61% to 2,649.81.

The Australian All Ordinaries ended the day on Wednesday with a loss of 48.40 points or 0.83% at 5,749.10.

The Australian dollar continued its descent which began on Tuesday. Around the Australian close on foreign exchange markets Wednesday, the Aussie had fallen to 0.7294.

The British pound fell sharply to a low of 1.2672 as British parliamentarians began deliberating Theresa May's Brexit deal. The pound however recovered from its low to trade at around 1.2741.

The Japanese yen weakened a touch to 112.98, while the Swiss franc was largely unchanged at 0.9990.

The Canadian dollar edged lower to 1.3284, while the New Zealand dollar held firm at 0.6926.

Overnight on Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrials shed 799.36 points or 3.10% to 25,027.07.

The Standard and Poor's 500 sank 90.31 points or 3.24% to 2,700.06.

The tech-laden Nasdaq Composite did worst of all, plunging 283.09 points or 3.80% to 7,158.43.

"The market is reassessing if anything tangible happened at the Trump-Xi dinner," Brent Schutte, chief investment strategist at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company, was quoted by MarketWatch as saying.

"The market wants news of concrete steps to lower tariffs, not just pronouncements."