Stocks - Nikkei Edges Higher In Mixed Asian Share Trade On Fed Views, BoJ
Investing.com - Shares in Asia were mixed on Thursday with the market digesting the Fed views on rates and the latest Bank of Japan review.
The Nikkei 225 rose 0.47%, while Australia's S&P/ASX 200 fell 1.09%. In Greater China, the Hang Seng index inched up 0.10%, while the Shanghai Composite gained 0.21%.
Japan's Toshiba said Wednesday it would sell its memory chip unit to a consortium backed by Bain Capital. While Bain had brought SK Hynix in on the deal, Toshiba did not mention the South Korean chip maker in its announcement, Reuters reported. The deal would be worth around ¥2 trillion ($18 billion), Reuters added.
Meanwhile, Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) said it would be commencing arbitration against Toshiba through its subsidiaries. The U.S. data storage company, which is involved in joint ventures with Toshiba, had been part of another group that had attempted to buy the Japanese conglomerate's flash memory unit. Toshiba stock underperformed other Japanese tech names, falling 2.86%.
The Bank of Japan held policy steady as expected after the conclusion of it two-day meeting on Thursday, with an asset buying program focused on the yield curve at ¥80 trillion annually.
The board voted 8 to 1 to keep the yield curve policy in place and the bank raised its estimates of public investment wile the vote in asset buying was unanimous.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, rose 0.15% to 92.36.
Earlier, New Zealand reported second quarter GDP bang-on with expectations, up 0.8% on month and a 2.5% annual rise.
The Federal Reserve said it would start to unwind $4.5 trillion in financial crisis-era support starting in October and stuck to its forecast to raise interest rates again this year, saying hurricane damage won’t derail an otherwise healthy expansion.
“Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria have devastated many communities, inflicting severe hardship,” the Federal Open Market Committee said in its statement on Wednesday following a two-day meeting in Washington.
“Storm-related disruptions and rebuilding will affect economic activity in the near term, but past experience suggests that the storms are unlikely to materially alter the course of the national economy over the medium term.”
As expected, policy makers left the benchmark interest rate unchanged in a range of 1 percent to 1.25 percent.
“We continue to expect that the ongoing strength of the economy will warrant gradual increases in that rate to sustain a healthy labor market and stabilize inflation around our 2 percent longer-run objective,” Chair Janet Yellen said during a press conference.
Overnight, Wall Street notched a seventh-straight record closed as bank stocks surged in the wake of a somewhat hawkish Federal Reserve statement that stoked December rate-hike expectations. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed higher at 22412.59. The S&P 500 closed 0.06% higher while the Nasdaq Composite closed at down 0.08%.
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