Asian shares track technology-led sell-off on Wall Street
Shares fell in Asia on Thursday after the release of worse inflation data than expected sparked heavy selling of technology stocks on Wall Street.
Hong Kong’s benchmark fell 2.2% to 19385.47 following the arrests of several prominent democracy advocates, including a retired Roman Catholic cardinal.
The arrests of Cardinal Joseph Zen, singer Denise Ho and others followed the choice last weekend of a hard-line chief executive for the semi-autonomous Chinese territory, where Beijing has been tightening controls.
More broadly, markets are focused on inflation as central banks wind down support for economies that was rolled out during the pandemic. The U.S. Federal Reserve, for example, has flipped aggressively toward raising interest rates after seeing high inflation last longer than it expected.
Wednesday’s report from the U.S. Labor Department showed inflation slowed a touch in April, down to 8.3% from 8.5% in March. Investors also found some glass-half-full signals in the data suggesting the consumer price index, or CPI, may be peaking and set to ease further, but the numbers were still higher than economists forecast.
“The consensus is that inflation has peaked, at least in the US. A floor for global equity markets depends on how quickly US CPI inflation falls," Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.
Producer prices are due later Thursday.
In other Asian trading, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 gave up 1.8% to 25,748.72.
The Shanghai Composite index shed 0.5% to 3,043.59. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 lost 1.6% to 6,936.90. South Korea's Kospi slipped 1.5% to 2,552.45.
On Wednesday, an early rally faded, leaving the S&P 500 1.6% lower at 3,935.18. That wiped out gains from a day before, when the benchmark index snapped a three-day losing streak.
The Dow...