Asia markets mostly lower ahead of Powell's speech at Jackson Hole; Australia snaps 10-day win streak
While it is not exactly clear what Powell will say, he has previously used the speech to outline broad policy initiatives and to provide policy clues
Aliver
A customer shops at a supermarket in Tokyo on Feb. 27, 2024.
Kazuhiro Nogi | Afp | Getty Images
Asia-Pacific markets mostly fell on Friday as investors awaited U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's comments at the Jackson Hole gathering of global central bankers.
In the past, Powell has outlined broad policy initiatives and provided clues about the U.S. policy path at Jackson Hole.
In Asia, data from Japan showed the country's headline inflation at 2.8% in July, unchanged from the previous month.
Core inflation, which strips out prices of fresh food, stood at 2.7%, in line with expectations from economists polled by Reuters and higher than June's figure of 2.6%.
However, the so called "core-core" inflation rate, which strips out prices of both fresh food and energy and is tracked by the Bank of Japan, fell to 1.9% in July from 2.2% in June.
This is the lowest the "core-core" inflation rate has reached since September 2022.
Japan's Nikkei 225 gained 0.4% to 38,364.27, while the Topix rose 0.5% and closed at 2,684.72. Both indexes hit their highest level since Aug. 1, a day before the Asia markets meltdown.
Bank of Japan's Governor Kazuo Ueda told the country's parliament on Friday that the central bank will "remain highly vigilant" to market moves, adding that the markets remained unstable, Reuters reported.
South Korea's Kospi was down 0.22% and ended at 2,701.69, and the small-cap Kosdaq fell marginally to close at 773.26. The small cap index recorded a third straight day of losses.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 slipped just below the flatline to 8,023.9, snapping a 10-day winning streak.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was down 0.14% as of its final hour, while mainland China's CSI 300 reversed losses to rise 0.42%, closing at 3,327.19. The CSI had slipped to a fresh six-month low, before changing course to gain.
Early Friday, Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group said in a statement that it would convert its secondary listing in Hong Kong to a primary listing, making the company dual listed on both in Hong Kong and in New York.
"Our voluntary conversion to dual primary listing does not involve any issue of new shares and/or fund-raising," it added.
Overnight in the U.S., the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite saw the largest loss among all three major indexes, shedding 1.67% as technology stocks dropped.
The broad S&P 500 slipped 0.89%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended down 0.43%.
—CNBC's Alex Harring and Pia Singh contributed to this report.
