Japan leads Asian markets decline

Dhwani Mehta FXStreet

Despite a positive close on the Wall Street overnight, the Asian equity markets opened on a mixed note, and drifted lower thereon, mainly driven by steep losses in the Japanese stocks and weaker oil prices.

Japan’s TOPIX index dropped the most in two and a half weeks as more than half of the companies on the index went ex-dividend, resulting in a sell-off across the Japanese markets.

While losses in the energy and resource sector stocks on the back of ongoing oil-price weakness, in wake of fizzling output cut hopes, also added to the bearish sentiment around the region’s indices.

Meanwhile, Japan’s Nikkei 225 now drops -1.63% to 16,411, the Australian S&P/ASX 200 turned negative at 5,405, while the Chinese equities ignored upbeat consumer sentiment data , with the benchmark Shanghai Composite index losing -0.27%, while CSI300 index declines -0.31%. Hong Kong markets drop -0.62% to trade around 23,420 levels.

Author

Dhwani Mehta

FXStreet

Residing in Mumbai (India), Dhwani is a Senior Analyst and Manager of the Asian session at FXStreet. She has over 10 years of experience in analyzing and covering the global financial markets, with specialization in Forex and commodities markets.

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