Asian shares were mixed on Wednesday despite an overnight decline on Wall Street after President Donald Trump ordered a stop to talks on another round of aid for the economy.
Asian shares
- Markets rose in Hong Kong and Sydney but fell in Tokyo.
- Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.4% to 24,087.46 and the Kospi in South Korea added 0.3% to 2,372.49. Japan’s Nikkei 225 slipped 0.2% to 23,395.31.
- Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 jumped 0.8%, as investors were cheered by the government’s budget plan, which included tax cuts, subsidies and other stimulus to counter the impact of the pandemic.
- Shares fell in Singapore but rose in Indonesia.
- The S&P 500 index slid 1.4% to 3,360.97 after gaining 0.7% before the president’s announcement, which he made on Twitter about an hour before the close of trading. The late-afternoon pullback erased most of the benchmark index’s gains from a market rally a day earlier.
Commodities
- Oil prices extended their decline. With West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures down 48 cents at $40.18 a barrel by 0748 GMT.
- Gold was up 0.7% at 0748 GMT, at $1,890.91 per ounce.
Currency Markets
- Euro-dollar was up 0.2% at $1.1756.
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The pound was up 0.4% at $1.2919.
- The dollar – which initially rose when the talks in Washington were cancelled – fell as European markets opened on Wednesday, down 0.1% against a basket of currencies at 93.705
- The Australian dollar, a liquid proxy for risk, was up 0.5% against the U.S. dollar.
