Asian Shares Retreat, Track Wall Street Losses

Asian shares were mostly lower Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2022, as pessimism prevailed about higher interest rates ahead and Wall Street continued a late-summer slump, Yuri Kageyama reported for the Associated Press (AP).

Photo Insert: Shares fell on Wall Street coming into a holiday-shortened week.

Shares fell in Tokyo, Sydney, South Korea, and Hong Kong, but were little changed in Shanghai. Oil prices fell, while the Japanese yen continued to decline against the US dollar to about 144 yen.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 shed 0.7% to finish at 27,430.30. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 dropped 1.4% to 6,729.30. South Korea’s Kospi slid 1.4% to 2,376.46. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dipped 1.0% to 19,003.55, while the Shanghai Composite was little changed, inching up less than 0.1% at 3,245.22.

Shares fell on Wall Street coming into a holiday-shortened week. The S&P 500 fell 0.4% after bouncing between a gain of 0.5% and a loss of 1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.6% and the Nasdaq lost 0.7%.

The S&P 500 fell 16.07 points to 3,908.19. The Dow slid 173.14 points to 31,145.30, while the Nasdaq fell 85.96 points to 11,544.91. Smaller company stocks fell more than the broader market.

The Russell 2000 index fell 17.42 points, or 1%, to 1,792.32. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which influences interest rates on mortgages and other loans, rose to 3.34% from 3.19% late Thursday.

The two-year Treasury yield, which tends to track expectations for Fed action, rose to 3.51% from 3.39%. In energy trading, benchmark US crude fell $1.42 to $85.46 a barrel.

Brent crude, the international standard, fell $1.30 to $91.53 a barrel. In currency trading, the US dollar rose to 144.01 Japanese yen from 142.76 yen. The euro was little changed at 99 cents, Damian J. Troise, Alex Veiga and Joe McDonald reported for AP.

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