European markets open lower; tech stocks down 2.5% following declines on Wall Street

LONDON — European stocks tumbled at the open Wednesday, following losses on Wall Street Tuesday and in Asia-Pacific markets overnight.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 index was 1.1% lower in early deals, with all sectors in the red. Technology stocks dropped 2.5% and autos and banks both shed 1.3%.

The sharp decline in the region's markets comes after the major U.S. averages kick-started September lower (U.S. markets were closed Monday for the Labor Day holiday), with the S&P 500 clocking its worst day since the early August global rout.

Wall Street's losing session saw chip names come under pressure after two readings of U.S. manufacturing production implied slowing growth for the U.S. economy. Technology darling Nvidia tumbled more than 9% through Tuesday's session amid a broader pullback in semiconductor stocks.

U.S. stock futures were lower early Wednesday.

The declines stateside prompted Asia-Pacific markets to plunge overnight, with Japan's Nikkei 225 down 3.19%, leading losses in Asia, while the broad based Topix was down 2.79%.

"I don't think we've got clarity as to whether the [U.S.] economy's doing any more than slowing its growth rate, or earnings are really falling at an index level in a meaningful way," Freddie Lait, chief investment officer at Latitude Investment Management, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" on Wednesday.

"To me, it's much more about momentum and technicals than it is about fundamentals at the moment, and that's frankly what led the market last month in that big crash and recovery that we saw. It's not individual, long-term, fundamental investors driving these markets anymore."

Lait added, "It's the momentum traders, it's the macro traders, it's the high-frequency traders, it's all the other players in the market that have different reasons to be trading stocks [on] shorter time frames or different kinds of investment philosophies that tend to cause these moves to be larger than they would have been in the past. So I'm not trying to rationalize it."