AFP :
Asian markets mostly fell Friday following a broadly negative lead from Wall Street, where tech giants led a sell-off on profit-taking, while traders are on intervention watch as the yen retreats back towards a three-decade low.
A batch of worse-than-forecast US data provided further signs that the world’s number one economy was softening but that was not enough to help push the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to more record highs.
The readings showed more people claiming for unemployment benefit than estimated, housing starts falling and a key gauge of business confidence for June well down from May.
Meanwhile, Minneapolis Fed boss Neel Kashkari said it could take a year or two to bring inflation back down to the central bank’s two percent target, echoing his colleagues’ warnings that they wanted to take their time before cutting borrowing costs.
The economic figures boosted interest rate cut hopes but were overshadowed by losses in market titans including Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft who have spearheaded the recent tech-fuelled rally in US markets.
The 3.5 percent drop in Nvidia meant it relinquished its crown as the world’s most valuable publicly traded firm to Microsoft, which it had overtaken earlier this week.
Asian traders tracked the weak lead, with Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul, Wellington, Taipei and Manila all down. Singapore, Sydney and Jakarta edged up while Tokyo was flat.
Attention is once again being given to the yen as it edges back towards the 34-year low against the dollar, which led to a suspected intervention by Japanese authorities in April. Fading hopes that the Fed will cut interest rates more than once this year — if at all — have pushed the dollar up against its peers in recent weeks, with the yen taking a hit owing to the Bank of Japan’s refusal to tighten monetary policy quicker.