Asian stocks mostly lower after mixed day on Wall Street

Stocks were mostly lower in Asia on Wednesday after a lackluster session on Wall Street, where weak jobs data and pandemic concerns weighed on sentiment.

Shares rose in Tokyo after economic growth for the April-June quarter was revised upward to an annualized 1.9% from an earlier estimate of 1.3%.

“Any feel-good factor was ignored, though, given the climb was less than half of the 4.20% fall in Q1," Jeffrey Halley of Oanda said in a commentary. “Japan will be lucky to break even this year as the current Covid-19 wave will almost certainly have weighed on domestic consumption," he said.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party is due to elect a new prime minister to succeed Yoshihide Suga, adding to uncertainty over future policy, but fresh stimulus for the economy is expected in the coming weeks, analysts say.

Japan's Nikkei 225 index rose 0.5% to 30,070.19, while the Hang Seng in Hong Kong shed early gains, falling 0.5% to 26,236.74. The Shanghai Composite index gave up 0.3% to 3,666.22. In Seoul, the Kospi lost 0.9% to 3,158.63. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.4% to 7,504.30, and benchmarks declined in Taiwan and Singapore.

In New York, gains for some Big Tech companies nudged the Nasdaq composite barely higher to another record, while the benchmark S&P 500 slipped 0.3%, breaking two weeks of gains. The Dow industrials lost 0.8%.

The pullback in stocks came as traders returned from the Labor Day holiday weekend to a relatively light week of economic data. The last big economic snapshot, the August jobs report, came in weaker than expected last Friday.

“Scratching my head to make sense of it all, it appears that U.S. markets are concerned about the hoped-for post-pandemic recovery being somewhat less exuberant than hoped," Halley said.

The S&P 500 fell 15.40...