Asian shares track Wall St retreat on interest rate worries

BANGKOK (AP) — Asian shares tracked a retreat on Wall Street after details from last month’s Federal Reserve meeting showed the central bank plans to be aggressive in fighting inflation.

The Fed comments have added to investor unease over the war in Ukraine, coronavirus outbreaks in China and persistent high inflation.

Benchmarks fell Thursday in all major regional markets. U.S. futures fell while oil prices were higher.

The minutes from the meeting three weeks ago showed Fed policymakers agreed to begin cutting the central bank’s stockpile of Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities by about $95 billion a month, starting in May. That’s more than some investors expected and nearly double the pace the last time the Fed shrank its balance sheet.

At the meeting, the Fed raised its benchmark short-term rate by a quarter percentage point, the first increase in three years. The minutes showed many Fed officials wanted to hike rates by an even bigger margin last month, and they still saw “one or more” such supersized increases potentially coming at future meetings.

Higher rates tend to reduce the price-to-earnings ratio of stocks, a key valuation barometer. Such a scenario can particularly hurt stocks that are seen as the priciest, which includes big technology companies.

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index lost 1.5% to 26,933.04 while the Hang Seng in Hong Kong lost 1% to 21,862.49. The Shanghai composite index shed 1.3% to 3,243.45. South Korea's Kospi declined 1.3% to 2,700.94 and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gave up 0.7% to 7,440.30.

Overnight, the S&P 500 fell 1% to 4,481.15, adding to its losses from a day earlier. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.4% to 34,496.51 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 2.2% to 13,888.82.

Smaller company stocks also fell, sending the Russell...