Shares on Friday fell in most Asian markets after China reported a bigger-than-expected rise in prices that could prompt authorities to act to cool inflation.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index rebounded after falling the day before, but shares declined in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sydney and Seoul.
On Thursday, stocks closed moderately higher on Wall Street, lifted by gains in large technology companies that benefit from lower bond yields, but an increase in jobless claims dented some of the buying enthusiasm.
Photo: AP
China reported that consumer prices rose last month due largely to a jump in fuel prices, while producer prices climbed at the fastest pace in more than four years.
China’s consumer price index rose 0.4 percent last month compared with minus-0.2 percent in February, as fuel prices jumped nearly 12 percent from a year earlier. Prices paid by manufacturers rose 4.4 percent from a year earlier.
Inflation reflects rising demand as China’s economy leads the globel recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Worries that stronger growth might spur inflation that regulators in many major economies would then move to cool, partly by raising interest rates, have been hanging over markets for the past several months.
China’s central bank already has ordered lenders to slow the pace of credit growth to counter rising risks.
Added to that, a fresh round of US sanctions, this time against seven Chinese supercomputer makers, has revived concern over trade friction between the two largest economies, Oanda Corp senior market analyst for Asia-Pacific Jeffrey Halley said.
“Asian markets are once again adopting a more cautious posture today. Geopolitics is never far from the surface, even if it is often lost in the global recovery noise,” Halley said in a report.
Taiwan’s TAIEX ended down 72.34 points, or 0.43 percent, at 16,854.1, but rose 1.71 percent from a week earlier.
Turnover totaled NT$436.298 billion (US$15.34 billion).
The Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.92 percent to 3,450.68, and dropped 0.97 percent for the week, while in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng fell 1.07 percent to 28,698.8, posting a weekly decline of 0.83 percent.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gave up 0.05 percent to 6,995.2, but gained 2.44 percent for the week.
South Korea’s KOSPI declined 0.36 percent to 3,131.88, increasing 0.61 percent from a week earlier.
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 rose 0.2 percent to 29,768.06, dropping 0.29 percent for the week, while the TOPIX rose 0.39 percent to 1,959.47, declining 0.62 percent from a week earlier.
Shares in Sony Corp rose 2.7 percent after the company signed an exclusive movie distribution deal with Netflix Inc.
Additional reporting by staff writer, with CNA
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
RSS