Tokyo, Feb 10:Asian shares were mostly lower on Friday after Wall Street retreated for a second day as market watchers considered earnings reports and various indicators about whether inflation is waning in the US and elsewhere.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 added 0.3 per cent to 27,670.98. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.8 per cent to 7,433.70. South Korea’s Kospi declined 0.5 per cent to 2,468.68. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed 1.9 per cent to 21,219.05, while the Shanghai Composite was down 0.3 per cent at 3,260.67.
Shares in Mumbai, Taiwan and Singapore also declined.
China reported that its consumer inflation rate ticked up last month as demand revived due to the lifting of pandemic restrictions and travel and spending connected with the Lunar New Year, the country’s biggest holiday.
Producer prices fell 0.8 per cent in January after a 0.7 per cent decline the month before. Consumer price inflation rose to 2.1 per cent from a 1.8 per cent climb in December.
Next week will bring the release of US and British inflation updates, as well as US retail sales and industrial production data. On Tuesday, Japan will report its economic growth figures for the final quarter of 2022.
Wall Street share prices dropped Thursday following another mixed set of profit reports from companies, amid rising expectations for interest rates.
The S&P 500 fell 0.9 per cent to 4,081.50, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.7 per cent to 33,699.88. The Nasdaq composite sank 1 per cent to 11,789.58.
Stocks have been flipping from gains to losses and back again amid uncertainty about where interest rates and inflation are heading. A still-strong jobs market has investors buying more into the Federal Reserve’s forecast that it will hike rates a couple more times before holding them at a high level through this year. High rates can drive down inflation but also raise the risk of a recession and hurt investment prices.
High inflation and worries about a slowing economy have already begun to hit corporate earnings, and big US companies have been reporting relatively lackluster results for the end of 2022.
The Walt Disney Co. Surprised the market when it reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It also said it will cut about 7,000 jobs as part of a plan to reduce its costs by USD 5.5 billion. Its shares fell 1.3 per cent after being up more than 5 per cent earlier in the morning.
Most of the high-profile companies that have announced layoffs have been in the technology industry, where companies acknowledged misreading the boom coming out of the pandemic and hiring too many people. But job cuts have also spread to other industries.
Overall, though, the job market has remained resilient. Last week, 196,000 US workers filed for unemployment benefits. That was slightly more than the prior week, but it remained below the 200,000 level for a fourth straight week.
Another drop for Google’s parent company, Alphabet, also weighed heavily on the market. It fell 4.4 per cent, continuing its rough week amid worries about competition from Microsoft, which recently unveiled a new Bing search engine powered by artificial intelligence.
In energy trading, benchmark US crude fell 20 cents to USD 77.86 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international standard, fell 9 cents to USD 84.41 a barrel.
In currencies, the US dollar inched up to 131.59 Japanese yen from 131.44 yen. The euro cost USD 1.0732, up from USD 1.0729. (AP)
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