This photo taken on October 23, 2022 shows people looking at fruit and vegetables outside a supermarket along a covered shopping street in Tokyo.
Richard A. Brooks | Afp | Getty Images
Asia-Pacific markets fell on Friday, tracking Wall Street declines as investors continued to rotate out of tech stocks and take profits from the rally in equities in recent weeks.
“There’s some profit taking,” said Keith Buchanan, senior portfolio manager at Globalt Investments. “I kind of cringe a bit if the profit taking occurs five days into a trade, but that just shows us the magnitude of what we’ve seen as far as the rotation.”
In Asia, Japan’s inflation came in at 2.8% for June unchanged from May, while core inflation, which strips out prices of fresh food, accelerated to 2.6%, from 2.5%.
However, the core inflation reading was lower than the 2.7% expected by a Reuters poll of economists.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 slipped 0.55% after the inflation report, while the broad-based Topix was down 0.71%.
The country’s central bank is unlikely to raise interest rates at its policy-setting meeting in July as it seeks to support economic growth, more than 75% of the economists said in a Reuters poll.
Japanese chip-related stocks rebounded from Thursday’s losses, with semiconductor suppliers rising. Tokyo Electron was up 2.3%, Advantest gained 2% and LaserTec rose 1.34%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index tumbled 2.23%, leading losses in Asia as energy stocks fell, while mainland China’s CSI 300 inched up 0.12%.
However, Chinese chip stocks listed in Hong Kong bucked the trend, with Hua Hong Semiconductor up 4.46% and SMIC gaining 1.5%.
South Korean and Taiwanese chip stocks continued to decline, with heavyweights Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Samsung Electronics, and Hon Hai Precision Industry — known internationally as Foxconn — extending losses.
South Korea’s Kospi fell 1.5%, while the small-cap Kosdaq lost 0.21%. The Taiwan Weighted Index shed 1.64%.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 plunged 1.14%.
