Asia equities retract as euphoria over Fed Chairman's comments fizzles

28 Mar 2012 Evaluate

Stock markets across Asia largely drifted into the negative terrain on Wednesday after sentiments got undermined by overnight decline on Wall Street. The euphoria over Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s hint on Tuesday that US interest rates will remain accommodative and that more quantitative easing cannot be ruled out, seems to have given way to profit booking in the session. The largely in line US consumer confidence data along with home price reports failed to persuade market participants to open fresh positions after the previous session’s sharp upmove in the region.

Barring the benchmark in Taiwan, all major equity indices in Asian region slipped lower with the Chinese and Japanese equity indices leading the losers after plunging over a percentage points each. The shares in Hong Kong too slipped over half a percent as energy and telecommunication shares dragged the equity index.

Shanghai Composite plunged 28.30 points or 1.21% to 2,318.88, Hang Seng sank 144.16 points or 0.68% to 20,902.75, Jakarta Composite eased 8.40 points or 0.21% to 4,070.99, KLSE Composite shed 1.09 points or 0.07% to 1,587.01, Nikkei 225 plummeted 103.83 points or 1.01% to 10,151.32, Straits Times slipped 12.80 points or 0.42% to 3,006.11 and Seoul Composite dropped 5.63 points or 0.28% to 2,034.13.

On the flipside only Taiwan Weighted gained 20.00 points or 0.25% to 8,049.46.

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