SINGAPORE — Shares in Asia-Pacific gave up early gains to mostly fall on Friday after a comeback on Wall Street as investors continued to digest the Fed’s plans to fight inflation.
The Nikkei 225 lost 0.18%, while the Topix slipped 0.28%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 0.17%, while the Hang Seng Tech index dropped 1.14%.
Mainland Chinese markets were mixed. The Shanghai composite gained 0.34%, while the Shenzhen component slid 0.31%
In South Korea, the Kospi declined 0.23% and the Kosdaq lost 0.16%.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.62%.
Major stock indexes in the U.S. reversed losses to rise slightly at the close.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 87.06 points, or 0.25%, to 34,583.57 after losing as much as 300 points earlier in the session. The S&P 500 was up 0.43% at 4,500.21, and the Nasdaq Composite inched up 0.06% to 13,897.30 following two straight days of losses.
Defensive stocks such as consumer staples and health care led the market comeback.
“The reaction to the Fed minutes early yesterday morning continued to dominate markets overnight,” Taylor Nugent, an economist at the National Australia Bank, wrote in a note.
Weekly jobless claims in the U.S. fell to 166,000 last week, the lowest number in more than 53 years.
The 10-year Treasury yield touched 2.667%, its highest level since March 2019. It was last at 2.6390%.
Elsewhere, the Reserve Bank of India will meet for the last day of its monetary policy meetings. Economists predict that interest rates will only rise in August, according to a Reuters poll.
Currencies
The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was at 99.824.
The Japanese yen traded at 123.79 per dollar, while the Australian dollar was at $0.7482.
U.S. crude futures rose 0.61% to trade at $96.62 per barrel early in Asia, while international benchmark Brent crude futures gained 0.50% to $101.08 per barrel.
