SINGAPORE – Asia Pacific stocks were lower Friday after major Wall Street indices fell overnight.
In Japan, the NIkkei 225 was down 0.87% while the Topix index was down 0.78%.
Japan’s core consumer prices fell 0.6% year-on-year in January, the country’s statistics bureau announced on Friday. According to Reuters, this was the sixth consecutive month of annual declines.
The markets in mainland China were mixed, with the Shanghai composite hovering above the flatline while the Shenzhen component fell 0.206%. The Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong fell 0.48%.
South Korea’s Kospi lost 0.94%.
Australian stocks fell as the S&P / ASX 200 fell 1.13%.
Australian retail sales in January rose by a seasonally adjusted 0.6% compared to the previous month. That comes from preliminary retail sales figures released by the country’s statistics bureau on Friday. That was lower than expected in a Reuters poll for a 2% increase.
MSCI’s broadest index for stocks in the Asia-Pacific region outside of Japan was down 0.42%.
Oil prices are falling
Oil prices fell on the morning of Friday morning trading hours in Asia as the international reference Brent crude oil futures fell 1.77% to $ 62.80 a barrel. The US crude oil futures fell 2.16% to $ 59.21 a barrel.
The US dollar index, which tracks the greenback versus a basket of its peers, was 90.573 as it fell from above 90.9 earlier in the week.
The Japanese yen was trading at 105.65 per dollar, stronger than above 106 against the greenback earlier this week. The Australian dollar changed hands at $ 0.7762 after rising from around $ 0.78 to below $ 0.774 this week.
– CNBC’s Jeff Cox contributed to this report.
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