Tokyo (awp / afp) – The Tokyo Stock Exchange fell on Friday morning, its positive momentum over the last three sessions having been broken by the President of the Fed, who almost acted on Thursday to raise its rates more significantly in May.
The flagship Nikkei index dropped 2.19% to 26,948.32 points and the broader Topix index lost 1.69% to 1,895.41 points.
US Federal Reserve (Fed) boss Jerome Powell warned on Thursday that a half-percentage-point rate hike would be “on the table” at the central bank’s next meeting in early May, after a hike by 0.25 points in March.
This stretched significantly in the wake of US bond rates and reversed the trend on Wall Street, which closed Thursday sharply lower.
On the side of values
HITACHI: according to the economic daily Nikkei, the American fund KKR is preparing to buy Hitachi Transport System, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Hitachi (-1.4% to 5,983 yen) for more than 600 billion yen (4.3 billion euro).
Hitachi still owns 40% of this subsidiary and would retain 10% of the capital after the takeover by KKR, again according to the Nikkei. Asked by AFP, a spokeswoman for Hitachi assured that no decision had been made for the time being. The listing of Hitachi Transport System was suspended Friday morning in Tokyo.
On the side of oil and currencies
The oil market progressed very modestly, cooled in particular by the Fed: around 00:40 GMT the price of a US barrel of WTI barely gained 0.13% to 103.93 dollars and that of a barrel of Brent from the North Sea took 0, 12% to $108.46.
The yen lost ground against the dollar, which was worth 128.62 yen around 00:50 GMT against 128.38 yen Thursday at 21:00 GMT.
The Japanese currency also fell against the euro, to 139.30 yen for one euro against 139.09 yen the day before.
The European currency was stable against the greenback, at the rate of one euro for 1.0832 dollars against 1.0834 Thursday at 9:00 p.m. GMT.
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