Stocks in Australia fell on further weakness in iron ore but
most other shares in the region were mostly little changed Thursday
and the Shanghai market remained up nearly 4% so far this week amid
more stimulus measures from Beijing.
Australia's S&P ASX 200 was down 0.7%, led lower by
resources shares. Fortescue Metals Group Ltd. fell 4.8%, while BHP
Billiton Ltd. and Rio Tinto Ltd. lost 1.6% each. The move coincided
with a Reuters survey showing expectations for further weakness in
iron ore, with 2015 prices forecast to average $56 per metric ton,
down from a previous projection of $68 a ton made in January.
Most other benchmarks in Asia Pacific were close to flat,
continuing a recovery in the region from a selloff in European
bonds that spread globally to a range of asset classes.
The Shanghai Composite Index and Hang Seng Index were both flat.
The Hang Seng Index is down more than 1% this week, even after
China's central bank cut interest rates on Sunday for a third time
in six months.
The latest support for China's economy is a directive by China's
Finance Ministry, central bank and top banking regulator to help
local government restructure trillions of dollars in debt. The
directive was issued earlier this week to governments across the
country.
China's onshore yuan traded at its strongest since early May,
after China guided its currency up, setting the yuan to dollar
fixing at the strongest level in over one year.
Investors in the region also turned to Tencent Holdings Ltd.,
whose Hong Kong-listed shares rose 2.6%, after the Chinese Internet
giant's latest results showed it is making progress in generating
more revenue from advertising. Still, its net profit for the first
three months rose 6.6% from a year earlier, a significant slowdown
from the fourth quarter when net profit jumped 50%.
The Nikkei Stock Average was down 0.7%, breaking four days of
gains, its longest winning streak since February.
Japan is due to release its April preliminary machine tool
orders data on Thursday. Tool orders were up 14.6% on the year in
March. The report is likely to serve as a useful indicator of
future industrial activity.
In Korea, the Kospi Composite Index was roughly flat. Shares of
Amorepacific Corp. were up more than 3% although they were paring
gains, after the cosmetics giant reported a 72% jump in net profit
during the first three months of the year, as overseas earnings
more than doubled. The company earlier this week surpassed
steelmaker Posco to become South Korea's seventh most valuable
company by market capitalization, with a value of 22.7 trillion won
($21 billion).
Anjani Trivedi, Jonathan Cheng and Michael Kitchen contributed
to this article.
Write to Chao Deng at Chao.Deng@wsj.com
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