TOKYO/HONG KONG/SHANGHAI/SYDNEY (dpa-AFX) – The larger Asian stock markets mostly recorded significant losses on Friday. They followed the weak guidelines of Wall Street. The markets in the Far East are also slightly negative on a weekly basis.
The interest rate statements by the US Federal Reserve, which initially caused the markets to breathe, subsequently had the opposite effect. Analyst Jeffrey Halley from broker Oanda explained that market participants had apparently come to the realization that the statements by Fed Chair Jerome Powell certainly point to a strict monetary policy course and the associated risk of a recession. This hit the US stock markets correspondingly hard and left its mark on the Asian stock markets.
Mainland China’s markets have also suffered from the government’s commitment to a zero-Covid policy, Halley added. In Australia, signals from the central bank for a stricter monetary policy also had a negative impact. The CSI 300 index (CSI 300) with the 300 most important companies on the Chinese mainland tended to be 2.56 percent weaker at 3907.75 points. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 3.56 percent to 20,053.74 points, with sharp falls in technology stocks having a negative impact. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 (S&P ASX 200) fell 2.16 percent to 7205.60 points.
The exception was Japan. Here, the price development reflected what happened on the international markets in the past few days, when the Japanese stock exchange was closed for several public holidays. The weak yen is also helping the shares in the export-oriented country, Halley said. The leading index Nikkei 225 ended trading 0.69 percent firmer at 27,003.56 points./mf/jha/