TOKYO — Asian stocks fell broadly on Thursday as market attention turned to upcoming US economic data after Nvidia has announced its financial results.
Nvidia, one of the companies that responded enthusiastically to developments in the field of artificial intelligence, announced its profit figures on Wednesday.
The results showed a strong profit, but Nvidia shares fell 2.1% despite rising 153% for the year. The company is one of the most influential stocks on Wall Street, with a total market value of more than $3 trillion.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 fell 0.4% to 38,220.34. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.4% to 8,042.10. South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.8% to 2,667.65. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.5% to 17,608.50, while the Shanghai Composite fell 0.5% to 2,824.62.
Sentiment remained cautious even after the white house said Beijing and Washington are planning a phone call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden in the coming weeks.
The White House statement said both sides would keep lines of communication open. Concerns about tensions over Taiwan have been growing recently.
Investors are looking forward to Friday, when the U.S. government releases its latest inflation figures in the form of the July Personal Income and Expenditures Report (PCE).
Economists expect PCE, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure, to show inflation rose slightly to 2.6% in July, from 2.5% in June. It was as high as 7.1% by mid-2022. Since then, inflation has been steadily coming back toward the central bank’s 2% target, following the Fed’s aggressive rate hikes.
Wall Street and the Fed are trying to gauge the resilience of U.S. consumers amid pressure from inflation and high lending rates. The central bank is expected to begin cutting its benchmark interest rate from a two-decade high at its next meeting in September.
Stocks on Wall Street closed lower as a decline in big technology companies outpaced gains elsewhere in the market. The S&The P 500 fell 0.6%, mainly due to price declines at Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which came off two consecutive all-time highs, fell 0.4%. The Nasdaq Composite, which is heavily weighted with technology stocks, closed 1.1% lower.
All in all, the S&The P 500 fell 33.62 points to 5,592.18. The Dow fell 159.08 points to 41,091.42. The Nasdaq fell 198.79 points to 17,556.03.
Treasury yields were mixed in the bond market, with the yield on the 10-year Treasury rising to 3.84% from 3.83% on Tuesday.
In energy trading, U.S. benchmark crude rose 16 cents to $74.68 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 12 cents to $78.77 a barrel.
In currency trading, the US dollar rose to 144.52 Japanese yen from 144.44 yen. The euro was worth $1.1133, up from $1.1122.
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AP Business Writers Damian J. Troise and Alex Veiga contributed. Yuri Kageyama is on X: https://x.com/yurikageyama