Hong Kong, Aus shares fall as Wall Street sell-off continues in Asia; Bank of Japan holds rates

The Bank of Japan left its monetary policy unchanged, in line with widely expected expectations.

The central bank kept its negative interest rate at -0.1% and reiterated its target of keeping the yield on 10-year Japanese government bonds near 0%.

“The Japanese economy, despite being hit by factors such as higher commodity prices, has progressed as economic activity resumes,” the Bank of Japan said in its policy statement on Friday.

– Jihye Li

The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong saw sharp declines on Friday morning, led by Consumer Cyclicals, which fell 3.77%, with healthcare stocks down nearly 3% and technology stocks down 1.56%.

JD.com fell 11.04% while Geely Automobile shed 5.49%. BYD dropped 5.2% and Baidu 4.94%.

Property stocks such as Country Garden also saw a steep fall of 2.73%.

Alibaba was one of the leading lower movers, down 2.96%.

Kyodo reported that Japan has approved the appointment of Kazuo Ueda as the next governor of the Bank of Japan.

Kyodo pointed out that approval by the House of Councilors sets the stage for the government to formally appoint Ueda.

Kyodo said parliament also approved Shinichi Uchida and Ryozo Himino as the next deputy governors of the Bank of Japan.

The yield on 10-year Japanese government bonds fell to the upper limit of the central bank’s tolerance range at 0.5%.

Gerry Fowler, equity strategist at UBS, says a rise in interest rates in Europe should boost stock prices in the region by 20%.

Fowler also revealed that despite “structurally high” earnings potential, many stocks in the sector were trading below an unseen metric since “no one has really acknowledged this event.”

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Ganesh Rao

Bond yields are rising as markets jittery over fears that the US Federal Reserve will keep interest rates high for an extended period of time. Earlier this week, 2-year Treasuries rose above 5% for the first time since 2007.

As rates rise, it becomes harder to find stocks that can compete on a yield basis — but some do exist. CNBC Pro used FactSet to screen global stocks with yields greater than 5% on the MSCI World Index.

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– Weizen Tan

The Bank of Japan is unlikely to make any changes to its monetary policy at its upcoming meeting, according to a Reuters poll.

The center is expected to maintain its ultra-dowish stance and keep its benchmark interest rate at -0.1% during the two-day meeting, which will mark governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s final term before it expires in April.

Goldman Sachs cited three key drivers for Kuroda making no changes: the proximity of the meeting to the end of the fiscal year, ongoing salary negotiations, and “Kuroda’s long-standing view that a rate hike is premature.” has delayed Japan’s exit from deflation.”

Analysts at Goldman wrote “some caution must still be taken,” adding that they think “caution should be exercised when Governor Kuroda takes on the responsibility of cleaning up his legacy yield curve control policy.”

Kazuo Ueda has been nominated to be the next BOJ governor.

Lee Ying Shan

Japan’s household spending fell 0.3% on an annual basis in January, government data showed.

That is further below expectations from economists polled by Reuters to see a 0.1% decline for the month from a year earlier. Household spending fell 1.3% in December.

– Jihye Li

South Korea’s current account balance returned to a deficit of $4.52 billion in January, data from the Bank of Korea showed.

This comes after it printed a surplus of $2.68 billion in the current account balance in December.

South Korea’s current account balance fell into deficit territory for the first time since August 2022 in the January report.

The Korean won stood at 1,323.92 against the US dollar.

It is not just regional and tech-focused banks that are under pressure on Thursday.

The four largest US banks — JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup — all underperformed the broader market. Shares of Wells Fargo and Bank of America declined more than 6% each.

Combined, the decline of the four banks represented a loss of approximately $56 billion in market value on the day.

– Jesse Pound, Christopher Hayes

The stock fell on Thursday, with losses accelerating in the final hour of trading.

The S&P 500 closed down 1.85% at 3,918.32, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 543.54 points, or 1.66%, at 32,254.86. The Nasdaq Composite was down 2.05% at 11,338.35.

-Samantha Subin

Bank of America analyst Brad Lin raised his price objective on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing’s US-listed shares from $105 to $115. The new target is 26.6% higher than Wednesday’s close.

“Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is a key gainer and one of our 20 global AI stocks due to the growing and widespread applications of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI, led by ChatGPT,” wrote Lin.

“We think that generative AI should act as one of the greatest drivers of substantial computational requirements to run and train AI models.”

-Sarah Min

Initial jobs claims rose to 211,000 for the week ending March 4, the highest level of the year and since December 24.

Continued claims also hit a yearly high, coming in at 1.718M for the week of February 25. It also marked the highest level dating to December 17.

– Samantha Subin, Gina Francola