Stock market today: Asian shares mixed after calm day on Wall St
TOKYO — Asian shares were mixed on Wednesday after US stocks remained relatively steady on Wall Street.
US futures and oil prices fell, while the yen continued to weaken against the US dollar.
The Nikkei 225 in Tokyo lost 1.6% to 38,202.37.
Nintendo Co.’s stock price fell 5.4% after the company’s forecasts disappointed investors and it announced news of a successor to its popular Switch device in March 2025.
Sony Corp. lost 5% on speculation about a possible takeover of Paramount Global by Sony Pictures and private equity firm Apollo Global Management.
Market players are watching to see how authorities respond to the yen’s continued weakness against the US dollar.
The dollar rose from 154.50 yen to 155.20 Japanese yen. Japanese officials have expressed concern after the value of the yen fell to 160.25 per dollar in recent days, prompting the Finance Ministry to intervene.
“Exchange rate movements can have a major impact on the economy and prices, so there is a chance we may have to respond with monetary policy,” Kazuo Ueda, governor of the Bank of Japan, told lawmakers on Wednesday.
A weak yen benefits the profits of Japanese companies that earn much of their revenue abroad, but fluctuations in interest rates can disrupt planning and the yen’s weakness has seriously eroded the purchasing power of both households and businesses, causing the costs of importing food and energy have risen. among other things.
Elsewhere in Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index lost 0.7% to 18,354.11 and the Shanghai Composite index lost 0.6% to 3,129.65.
The Australian S&The P/ASX 200 edged 0.1% higher to 7,804.50, while South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.4% to 2,745.05.
Taiwan’s Taiex rose 0.2%.
On Tuesday the S&The P500 edged 0.1% higher to 5,187.70. It was a quiet day after three consecutive jumps for the index of at least 0.9%.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.1% to 38,884.26, and the Nasdaq index fell 0.1% to 16,332.56.
Kenvue, the company whose brands include Band-Aids and Tylenol, rose 6.4% after beating analysts’ expectations for both profit and revenue in the latest quarter.
Walt Disney Co. fell 9.5% despite reporting stronger results for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Revenue slightly lagged expectations and expectations are that the entertainment streaming business will decline in the current quarter.
They are among the tail end of companies that report their results for the first three months of the year. Most companies have beaten their earnings estimates, but according to FactSet, they aren’t getting as big of a boost to their stock prices as usual afterward. Not only that, companies that don’t meet earnings expectations have seen their stock prices fall more the next day than they have historically.
That could indicate that investors are listening to critics who call the US stock market in general too expensive after this year’s record attempt. For stock prices to rise further, profits will have to grow further or interest rates will have to fall.
Wall Street still sees the latter as a possibility this year, after some events last week that traders found encouraging.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the central bank remains closer to cutting its key interest rate than raising it, despite a string of stubbornly high inflation numbers this year. A cooler-than-expected jobs report on Friday, meanwhile, suggested the U.S. economy could accomplish the balancing act of remaining solid enough to avoid a severe recession without being so strong that inflation remains too high.
In other trading, U.S. benchmark crude fell 48 cents to $77.90 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On Tuesday it lost 10 cents to $78.38 a barrel.
Brent crude oil, the international standard, fell 52 cents to $82.64 a barrel.
The euro fell from $1.0755 to $1.0747.