Daily Times

Most Asian markets dropped on Friday, trailing Wall Street losses triggered by the US Federal Reserve boss’ signal of an aggressive monetary policy tightening cycle and the ongoing economic impact of Covid-19 restrictions in China. Tokyo ended more than 1.5pc down even as inflation data from Japan was in line with market expectations and better than elsewhere in the world. A falling yen, due mainly to the interest rate gap between Japan and the United States, had boosted trade on the Nikkei 225 all of this week, but it was not enough to alleviate concerns around the prospect of rate hikes in the United States. And a report that Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have discussed coordinated currency intervention to combat skyrocketing global inflation strengthened the yen on Friday. Seoul, Sydney, Jakarta, Mumbai and Taipei were also all down. But Shanghai pulled back marginally as some restrictions in China were eased and the country’s securities regulator pushed banks and insurers to buy more stocks to lift ailing equities — although the impact was minimal.