In Asia shares traded mixed on Tuesday, this was following a lacklustre lead from Wall Street. Here stocks fell following renewed concerns about growth in the US.
Weak retail sales data released for April as well as poor earnings from US retailers like JC Penney and Macey’s weighed heavily on investor sentiment. This caused the Down Jones and S&P 500 to go down.
At the close Japan’s Nikkei 225 closed down 1% to 19,570.24. All as the dollar weakened further against the yen. At the time of writing this the dollar was buying 119.18 yen. This compares with 119.8 yen in Tokyo yesterday.
Shares in car part maker Takata have gone down by 5.4% following Daihatsu and Honda having to recall more than 5 million cars. This was due to airbags that they had fitted and supplied by Takata and were potentially dangerous. This follows on from both Toyota and Nissan having to recall 6.5 million cars as well yesterday.
But camera maker Konica Minolta seems to be bucking this trend as their shares soared by 12%. This was following them announcing a share buy back and a rise in dividends from solid earnings.
As for Japanese electronics maker Sharp, they have agreed a 200bn yen (£1b/$1.7bn) bailout from the banks. This was following the announcement of further losses and more jobs needing to be cut. This is the second bailout for Sharp to have received in the last three years.
As for the rest of Asia. Chinese shares were also lacklustre with the Shanghai Composite closing up by 0.06% to 4,378.81. Meanwhile Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index closed 0.14% higher to 27,286.55.
The Hong Kong listed shares of property developers China Valke and Dalian Wanda jumped by 1.9% and 3.1% respectively. This occurred after they companies said that they would form a partnership so that they could acquire land and then develop real estate projects with each other.
As for Australia the S&P/ASX 200 index closed down by 0.3% to 5,696.60.
Shares in GrainCorp, Australia’s largest handler of bulk grain fell by 2.5% after their half year profits fell by more than 40% due to the dry weather.
Whilst in South Korea the Kospi index closed up 0.3% to 2,120.33.