Asia shares mostly down after losses in New York

A pedestrian looks at an electric quotation board displaying the Nikkei key index of the Tokyo Stock Exchange  in front of a securities company in Tokyo yesterday. Tokyo stocks closed down 1.50% on continued profit-taking with a weaker yen failing to lift the market into positive territory.

AFP/Tokyo

Asian markets mostly fell yesterday following losses on Wall Street, as minutes from the Federal Reserve’s recent policy meeting showed officials are confident the US economy can withstand stimulus cuts.

Tokyo dropped 1.50%, or 241.12 points, to 15,880.33 and Seoul fell 0.66%, or 12.85 points, to close at 1,946.11.

Hong Kong finished down 0.91%, or 209.26 points, at 22,787.33 while Shanghai closed down 0.82%, or 16.72 points, at 2,027.62.

Bucking the trend was Sydney, which rose 0.16%—or 8.4 points—to 5,324.40, despite news that Moody’s had become the second agency to cut Australian carrier Qantas’s debt rating to junk status after it announced a profit warning last month.

Qantas climbed 2.27% even after Moody’s said it now rates the airline Ba2 following Standard and Poor’s decision last month to assign it BB+ status.

Moody’s cited “a sharp deterioration in the company’s core domestic business” after the carrier forecast in December a half-year loss of up to Aus$300mn (US$267mn) and the slashing of 1,000 jobs due to “immense” cost pressures.

In other markets, Taipei fell 0.48%, or 41.33 points, to 8,514.68; TSMC slid 2.88% to Tw$101.0 while Hon Hai rose 1.26% to Tw$80.5. Wellington rose 35.07 points or 0.73% to 4,814.87.

Fletcher Building was up 2.14% at NZ$8.61 and Fonterra Shareholders’ Fund was down 1.71% at NZ$5.76 on news it will face a lawsuit over a botulism scare last year.

Manila was 0.82%, or 48.97 points, lower at 5,937.51; Metropolitan Bank plunged 5.01% to 73.90 pesos while International Container Terminal Services fell 2.51% to 97pesos. Bangkok was flat, adding 0.53 points to 1,258.26. Oil company PTT lost 0.35% to 284baht, while telecoms company Advanced Info Service dropped 1.46% to 203baht.

Jakarta finished flat, up 0.63 points at 4,201.22; Aneka Tambang fell 0.50% to 1,005 rupiah, while Bank Negara Indonesia rose 2.55% to 3,820 rupiah.

Singapore slid 0.17%, or 5.24 points, to 3,145.41; Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp eased 0.21% to Sg$9.74 while oil rig maker Keppel Corp dropped 1.43% to Sg$11.06.  Kuala Lumpur slipped 0.17%, or 3.09 points, to 1,828.21; Telekom Malaysia lost 0.2% to 5.43 ringgit, while plantation conglomerate Sime Darby shed 0.6% to 9.30 ringgit.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei-255 fell on continued profit-taking with a weaker yen failing to lift the market into positive territory.

Seoul’s slide came after South Korea’s central bank froze its key interest rate for an eighth consecutive month. The Bank of Korea kept its benchmark interest rate steady at 2.5% and maintained the forecast it made three months earlier that the economy will grow 3.8% this year.

In China, official figures showed inflation at 2.6% in 2013, well below Beijing’s 3.5% target. Analysts broadly welcomed the statistics, saying they pointed to a stable outlook for prices and a reduced chance of monetary tightening.

On Wall Street the Dow slipped and the S&P 500 ended flat on Wednesday after the release of minutes from the Fed’s December 17-18 policy meeting.

They showed that central bank policymakers expect unemployment to continue falling even without the support of its vast bond-buying programme.

The meeting concluded with the bank reducing its stimulus—which has been in place since September 2012 - by $10bn to $75bn in January.

“Most members agreed that the cumulative improvement in labour market conditions and the likelihood that the improvement would be sustained indicated that the (policy committee) could appropriately begin to slow the pace of its asset purchases at the meeting,” the minutes said.

“Most had become more confident” that labour market conditions would continue to improve.

The Dow slipped 0.41%, the S&P 500 was flat and the Nasdaq rose 0.30%.

The bank’s next meeting will be on January 28-29. Investors will have their eyes on the release today of non-farm payrolls data for fresh clues about the state of the economy.

In afternoon Tokyo currency trade the dollar bought 104.85 yen, against 104.82 yen late in New York but still down from rates slightly above 105 yen in Tokyo Wednesday.