Shares in Asia-Pacific fell on Friday as China left its benchmark lending rate unchanged.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index plunged 1.84% to close at 24,849.72, with Friday’s losses leaving the index more than 20% lower from its mid-February high.
Most Chinese tech shares in Hong Kong continued to see another day of heavy losses as regulatory uncertainty surrounding the sector lingered. Shares of Meituan dropped 4.54% while Alibaba fell 2.59% and JD.com declined 2.11%. Tencent, on the other hand, rose 1%. The Hang Seng Tech index shed 2.46% to 5,895.06.
Mainland Chinese stocks also closed lower as the Shanghai composite declined 1.1% to 3,427.33 and the Shenzhen component slipped 1.614% to 14,253.53.
China’s one-year loan prime rate (LPR) and five-year LPR were both left unchanged at 3.85% and 4.65%, respectively, on Friday. That was in line with expectations of majority of traders and analysts in a snap poll, according to Reuters.
The Nikkei 225 in Japan fell 0.98% to close at 27,013.25 while the Topix index shed 0.87% to end the trading day at 1,880.68.
Japanese automaker shares continued to see losses on Friday, with Toyota Motor falling 4.09% while
Nissan Motor dropped 7.25% and Honda Motor declined 4.84%.
That came following Toyota’s Thursday announcement that it will slash global production for September by 40% from its previous plan, Reuters reported. Shares of Toyota plunged more than 4% on Thursday after the Nikkei first reported on the firm’s plan.
Elsewhere, South Korea’s Kospi declined 1.2% while the S&P/ASX 200 in Australia closed fractionally lower at 7,460.90.
In Southeast Asia, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index in Malaysia advanced 0.2% to 1,518.03. Malaysia’s palace on Friday announced that the king named Ismail Sabri Yaakob as the new prime minister — the country’s third in three years. The announcement was made near the time the local stock markets closed.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan slipped 1.13%.
Overnight stateside, the S&P 500 gained about 0.13% to 4,405.80 while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.11% to 14,541.79. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lagged, slipping 66.57 points to 34,894.12.
