Tokyo (awp/afp) – The Tokyo Stock Exchange was down sharply on Friday morning, following in the footsteps of Wall Street, where the indices rose again the day before in the face of US inflation and the prospect of the tightening of the Fed.
The flagship Nikkei index lost 1.8% to 27,272.90 points around 1:10 a.m. GMT and the broader Topix index fell 1.46% to 1,910.28 points.
The New York Stock Exchange ended down again on Thursday, the Dow Jones falling for the fifth session in a row as investors feared the monetary tightening of the American Central Bank (Fed) expected from March.
“Instability will probably persist in the markets until March, until investors see the outcome of the meeting” of the Fed, commented Toshiaki Iwasaki of Mito Securities, quoted by the Bloomberg agency.
Consumer prices in Japan also rose 0.5% in December year on year, according to official data released on Friday before the opening, marking a fourth consecutive month of increases to seventeen months of decline or stagnation. .
Over the whole of 2021, consumer prices fell by 0.2% in the country, marked by several states of emergency and other restrictive measures in an attempt to limit Covid-19 contamination.
On the side of values
TOYOTA: the title of the automotive giant Toyota lost 3.88% to 2,251.5 yen. The Japanese manufacturer announced Thursday new interruptions in its production because of a growing number of cases of Covid-19 which affect its subcontractors and its operations in Japan.
Toyota shares had already plunged 5% on Wednesday after the automaker announced the previous day that it was not expected to meet its production target of 9 million vehicles for its current fiscal year 2021/22, which ends on 31 March, due to continued disruptions related to the shortage of semiconductors.
On the side of currencies and oil
The yen rose against the dollar, at the rate of one dollar for 113.78 yen around 01:10 GMT against 114.11 yen Thursday at 21:00 GMT.
The Japanese currency also regained ground against the euro, which was worth 128.60 yen against 129.08 yen the day before.
The euro traded at $1.1303 against $1.1312 on Thursday.
The oil market retreated: around 01:00 GMT the price of an American barrel of WTI lost 2.12% to 83.74 dollars and that of a barrel of Brent from the North Sea dropped 1.97% to 86.64 dollars.
mac/alc