Tokyo’s flagship index, the Nikkei, lost 0.49% to 28,313.47 points and the broader Topix index lost 0.22% to 1,967.18 points. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index fell 1.26% around 06:20 GMT.
The Tokyo Stock Exchange ended Wednesday in the red for the fifth consecutive session and Hong Kong was down sharply, in a general climate of risk aversion before the conference of central bankers in Jackson Hole.
Tokyo’s flagship index, the Nikkei, lost 0.49% to 28,313.47 points and the broader Topix index lost 0.22% to 1,967.18 points.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index fell 1.26% around 06:20 GMT.
Caution was also in order on Wednesday at the New York Stock Exchange pending the Jackson Hole conference (Wyoming, northwestern United States) which opens Thursday.
US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is due to speak there on Friday, and market participants should parse his every word to try to learn a little more regarding the continuation of the Fed’s drastic monetary tightening in the face of inflation. .
On the side of values
NUCLEAR: Japanese values in the nuclear sector jumped on Wednesday as the Japanese government intends to give a serious boost to the revival of this energy in the face of strong tensions over the supply of fossil fuels with the war in Ukraine.
The government will intensify its efforts to quickly restart several reactors shut down since the Fukushima disaster in 2011 and also study the possibility of building new generation reactors, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said.
Electricity supplier Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) soared 9.96% to 552 yen, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries appreciated 6.85% to 5,209 yen and nuclear engineering group IHI gained 5, 37% to 3,630 yen.
OLYMPUS: according to information from the daily Nikkei, Olympus (+ 2.69% to 3,088 yen) is preparing to sell for 400 billion yen (2.9 billion euros) its historical activity of microscopes to the American fund Bain Capital. Olympus, which recently spun off that business from the rest of the group to better focus on medical equipment, said in a stock market statement on Tuesday that no decision had yet been made.
On the side of oil and currencies
Oil was up very slightly: around 06:40 GMT the barrel of American WTI gained 0.13% to 93.86 dollars and the barrel of Brent from the North Sea took 0.07% to 100.29 dollars.
On the foreign exchange market, the dollar was stable at 136.76 yen around 06:50 GMT once morest 136.77 yen on Tuesday at 21:00 GMT.
The euro, however, fell to 135.98 yen once morest 136.36 yen the day before, and also weakened once morest the greenback, trading one euro for 0.9942 dollars once morest 0.9969 dollars at the end of the session Tuesday.
