BANGKOK– Shares fell in Asia on Friday, with the Hong Kong benchmark retreating as property shares sold off following recent gains.
U.S. futures edged higher after Wall Street markets closed for Thanksgiving on Thursday. Oil prices were mixed.
Japan reported that consumer inflation rose for the first time in four months, with big increases in food and hotel prices as tourism soared. The consumer price index rose 3.3% in October from a year earlier, up from 3% in September, a trend that runs counter to Bank of Japan forecasts that price pressures will ease by the end of the year.
“Both the government and the BOJ will be concerned about higher-than-expected inflation,” Robert Carnell and Min Joo Kang of ING Economics said in a commentary. That will likely lead to the central bank adjusting its extremely lax monetary policy in the new year, they said.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.5% to 33,625.53.
Chinese shares fell after recent gains, driven by expectations of more government support for debt-strapped developers. Shares in Country Garden, one of the largest, fell 7.6% after rising 16% the day before.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng fell 1.8% to 17,587.23. The Shanghai Composite index lost 0.7% to 3,042.10.
South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.7% to 2,496.63, while the S&Australia’s P/ASX 200 rose 0.2% to 7,040.80
In Bangkok, the SET fell 0.4%, while Taiwan’s Taiex fell less than 0.1%.
European shares headed higher in thin trading on Thursday. The German DAX rose 0.2% to 15,994.73 and the CAC 40 in Paris also rose 0.2% to 7,277.93. Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.2% to 7,483.58.
Wall Street will trade for only half a day on Friday. On Wednesday, before the holiday, the S&The P500 rose 0.4% and the Dow Jones rose 0.5%. The Nasdaq gained 0.5%.
Investors are watching to see how U.S. retailers fare as they unofficially kick off the holiday shopping season with Black Friday, amid growing concerns that spending will slow under pressure from dwindling savings, rising credit card debt and inflation.
The latest quarterly results from a range of retailers, from Walmart to Best Buy to Saks Fifth Avenue, signaled a weakening consumer appetite for spending, even as inflation eases and employment remains robust.
As price pressures ease, investors have become more optimistic that the Federal Reserve may be done raising rates to rein in inflation and could even consider cutting rates.
Fed officials have said the outlook for the economy remains uncertain and decisions on interest rates will depend on incoming reports. The Fed will get another major update next week when the government releases its October report on a key inflation measure tracked by the central bank.
In other trading Friday, benchmark U.S. crude lost 47 cents to $76.63 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Brent crude, the international price standard, rose 23 cents to $81.50 a barrel.
The US dollar fell from 149.54 yen to 149.40 Japanese yen. The euro was unchanged at $1.0906.