Bangkok, Aug. 12 (BNA): Stocks were mixed Friday in Asia after a muddled day on Wall Street, as indexes faltered after another encouraging inflation report.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 2.5%, to catch up after closing Thursday for a holiday. Hong Kong and Seoul also advanced, while Shanghai and Sydney retreated. US futures rose and oil prices fell.
Markets got a boost Thursday after a report showed that inflation at the wholesale level slowed more than economists expected last month, according to the Associated Press.
This came a day after a colder-than-expected reading of consumer inflation raised hopes among investors that inflation may be close to peaking and that the Federal Reserve will be less aggressive about raising interest rates than expected.
Inflation remains painfully high and the economy gave the wrong signals before this easing was only on the way for investors to pull the rug out from under it.
In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 index added 683 points to 28,503.25 in morning trading. Seoul’s Kospi rose 0.2% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.3% to 20146.93.
Sydney’s S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.8% to 7013.00, while the Shanghai Composite fell 0.2% to 3,276.53. Shares fell in India but rose in Taiwan.
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 closed 0.1% lower at 4,207.27 Thursday, but still on track for a fourth consecutive weekly gain. The Nasdaq lost 0.6% to 12779.91 and the Dow Jones rose 0.1% to 33,336.67. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 0.3% to 1,975.26. All three indices are also on track for weekly gains.
There was enough hope of a peak in inflation and Fed aggressiveness that the S&P 500 nearly halved its losses compared to earlier in the year. It has risen more than 14% from its low in mid-June.
Concerns about a possible recession still loom large in the market, as the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates to fight inflation.
Treasury yields were mostly higher on Thursday, with the 10-year bond yield rising to 2.89% from 2.79% late Wednesday, a significant move.
It’s still below the two-year yield, which sits at 3.21%. This is a relatively unusual event that some investors see as a fairly reliable sign of a pending recession, although the gap between the two has narrowed somewhat.
In other trading on Friday, US crude oil fell 46 cents to $93.88 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It jumped $2.41 to $94.34 a barrel on Thursday. Brent crude, the basis for pricing international trade, fell 43 cents to $99.17 a barrel.
The US dollar rose to 133.14 Japanese yen from 133.03 yen. The euro fell to $1.0321 from $1.0322.
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