Stock Market Today: Asian Stocks Fall After Wall Street Ends Another Winning Week

HONG KONG– Asian stocks were mostly lower on Monday after US stocks closed out their final week of gains on Friday, even as Nvidia the company’s shares cooled further after its surprising supernova run.

US futures were mixed and oil prices were little changed.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 index rose 0.5% to 38,804.65, becoming the only major benchmark in Asia to post gains on Monday.

The yen weakened to 159.72 against the dollar. The dollar closed at 159.77 yen on Friday.

The minutes of the Japanese central bank’s latest monetary policy meeting, released on Monday, put the yen under renewed pressure as it indicated that “any change in the policy interest rate should be considered only after economic indicators confirm that, for example, the CPI inflation rate has clearly started to decline.” recovery and medium and long-term inflation expectations have increased.”

However, it was reported that Masato Kanda, vice minister of the Japanese Ministry of Finance, said that authorities were prepared to intervene to support the currency at any time.

Elsewhere, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.8% to 17,893.33, while the Shanghai Composite lost 0.7% to 2,978.50.

S of Australia&P/ASX 200 fell 0.8% to 7,733.70. South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.7% to 2,766.13.

On Friday, S.&P500 fell 0.2% to 5,464.62 but remained close to its all-time high set on Tuesday and capped its eighth winning week in the last nine. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose less than 0.1% to 39,150.33, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.2% to 17,689.36.

Nvidia returned to drag on the market after falling 3.2%. The company’s shares have risen more than 1,000% since October 2022 in frantic demand for your chips, which are powering much of the world’s shift to artificial intelligence technology, and briefly supplanted Microsoft this week as Wall Street’s most valuable company.

But nothing goes up forever, and Nvidia’s declines over the past two days have sent its shares into their first week of losses in the last nine.

Much of the rest of Wall Street was relatively calm, with the exception of a few outliers.

In the bond market, US Treasury yields initially fell after a report suggested that business activity among countries using the euro currency was weaker than economists expected. Concerns are already great for the continent ahead of the French elections, which could further shake up financial markets.

The weak report on business activity dragged down yields in Europe, which initially put pressure on Treasury bond yields. But US yields recovered much of those losses after another report said late in the morning that US business activity may be stronger than previously thought.

Overall production growth reached the highest level in 26 months, according to S&P Global’s preliminary reading on activity among US manufacturing and services companies. Perhaps most important for Wall Street is the fact that this strength may be happening without a simultaneous increase in pressure on inflation.

“Historical comparisons indicate that the latest drop aligns the survey’s price indicator with the Fed’s 2% inflation target,” according to Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S.&P Global Market Intelligence.

The Federal Reserve is in a precarious situation where it is trying to slow the economy through high interest rates, just enough to increase inflation drops back to 2%. The trick is that he wants cut interest rates on the right time. If you wait too long, the economic slowdown could lead to a recession. If it’s too early, inflation could reaccelerate.

The 10-year Treasury yield fell to 4.25% from 4.26% on Thursday. The two-year Treasury yield, which most closely tracks expectations for Fed action, fell to 4.73% from 4.74%.

In other trading on Monday, benchmark U.S. crude fell 8 cents to $80.65 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Brent crude fell 5 cents to $84.28 per barrel.

The euro rose to $1.0710 from $1.0693.