Asian stocks mixed after quiet day on Wall Street

TOKYO (AP) — Asian stocks were mixed Wednesday after U.S. stocks remained relatively flat on Wall Street.

U.S. futures and oil prices fell, while the yen weakened further against the U.S. dollar.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 lost 1.6% to 38,202.37.

Nintendo Co.’s stock price fell 5.4% after the company’s forecast disappointed investors and it said news of a successor product to its popular Switch device would be announced soon. by March 2025.

Sony Corp. lost 5% due to speculation about a possible takeover of Paramount Global by Sony Pictures and private equity firm Apollo Global Management.

Market participants are waiting to see how authorities will respond to the continued weakness of the yen against the US dollar.

The dollar fell from 154.50 Japanese yen to 155.20 yen. Japanese officials have expressed concern after the value of the yen fell to 160.25 to the dollar in recent days, prompting the Finance Ministry to intervene.

“Changes in exchange rates could have a big impact on the economy and prices, so we may need to respond with monetary policy,” Kazuo Ueda, governor of the Bank of Japan, told lawmakers on Wednesday.

A weak yen contributes to the profits of Japanese companies that earn much of their revenue overseas, but rate fluctuations can disrupt planning and the weakness of the yen has seriously eroded the purchasing power of households and businesses, driving up the costs of food and energy imports. among others.

Elsewhere in Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 0.7% to 18,354.11 and the Shanghai Composite index lost 0.6% to 3,129.65.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.1% to 7,804.50, while South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.4% to 2,745.05.

Taiwan’s Taiex rose 0.2%.

On Tuesday, the S&P 500 edged up 0.1% to 5,187.70. It was a quiet day after three consecutive jumps for the index of at least 0.9%.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.1%, to 38,884.26, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.1%, to 16,332.56.

Kenvue, the company whose brands include Band-Aids and Tylenol, rose 6.4% after beating analysts’ earnings and revenue forecasts in the most recent quarter.

Walt Disney Co. fell 9.5% despite results for its latest quarter that were better than analysts expected. Its revenue is slightly lower than expected and the company expects its entertainment streaming business to slow down in the current quarter.

They are among the last companies to publish their results for the first three months of the year. Most companies beat their earnings forecasts, but they subsequently don’t get as big a boost in their stock prices as they usually do, according to FactSet. Additionally, companies that fail to meet earnings expectations have seen their stock prices fall more the next day than in the past.

That could suggest investors are listening to critics who have called the U.S. stock market too expensive after hitting record highs this year. For stock prices to continue to rise, either earnings will have to rise further or interest rates will have to fall.

Wall Street still views the latter as a possibility this year, following some events last week that traders found encouraging.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the central bank remained closer to cutting its main interest rate than raising it, despite a series of stubbornly high inflation indicators this year. At the same time, a colder-than-expected jobs report released Friday suggests the U.S. economy could succeed in the balancing act of remaining strong enough to avoid a serious recession without being so strong that it keeps l inflation at too high a level.

In other trading, benchmark U.S. crude oil fell 48 cents to $77.90 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It lost 10 cents Tuesday to $78.38 a barrel.

Brent crude, the international standard, fell 52 cents to $82.64 a barrel.

The euro fell from $1.0755 to $1.0747.