PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the short‐term stock market interactions between US and six major Asian markets – China, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. These six economies along with Japan and Australia have the largest stock exchanges in the Asia‐Pacific region. The importance of the US market to the Asian economies is the prime motivation for a quantitative assessment of its role in this region. The objective of this study is to measure the dynamic stock market interdependence of US and Asian newly industrialized economies (NIEs) (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) and emerging market economies (EMEs) (China and India) post Asian crisis of 1997 and also to capture the market interactions during the sub‐prime crisis.Design/methodology/approachThe study has employed Granger causality tests and generalized forecast error variance decomposition (FEVD) analysis to analyze the fluctuations in and the extent of short‐term interdependence between the US and Asian economies. VAR model was estimated to run the simulations for FEVD analysis.FindingsThe empirical results from FEVD analysis revealed the dominance of US stock market on Asian markets; the USA being a large economy of the world, an important trading partner and major supplier of capital to Asian region. Stock markets of Asia are not immune to the shocks originating in the USA although the effects of shocks vary considerably across markets. Further, an important implication is that major crisis events can influence the relationship among stock markets.Originality/valueThis is one of the first papers in the Asian context examining the interdependence with the US markets. Hence, even though most of the Asian economies went through liberalization, the macroeconomic and financial circumstances were very different before, after and during the process. This motivated the examination of the interactions between US and other Asian markets.