Asian markets prolong somber trend on Friday

The week’s last trading session is turning out to be a disappointing one for stock markets across the Asian region as investors at large lacked conviction to open fresh bets after reports showed that leading US bank JPMorgan suffered a $2 billion trading loss from a failed hedging strategy, as positions in credit securities proved riskier than expected. Investors also remained skittish amid the political uncertainty in European region as stakes are significantly high for the European Union to keep Greece afloat as the EU is now Greece's biggest creditor and a Greek default means euro zone taxpayers will take a hit. The overnight mixed close on Wall Street too failed to give any direction to the Asian markets.

Meanwhile, market participants went on to shrug the better than expected Chinese inflation figures which indicated consumer prices were below the government's forecast for a third month, boosting the odds of more monetary or fiscal stimulus in order to prop up the world’s second largest economy that expanded last quarter at the slowest pace since 2009. The benchmarks in Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan remained the top laggards with over a percent cuts each. However, the equity index in Japan bucked the somber trend and traded with slight gains on the back of a slew of encouraging earning announcements from heavyweight companies.

Shanghai Composite declined 5.69 points or 0.24% to 2,404.54, Hang Seng Index plunged 228.03 points or 1.13% to 19,999.25, Jakarta Composite sank 26.94 points or 0.65% to 4,106.70, KLSE Composite shed 1.21 points or 0.08% to 1,586.85, Straits Times Index slumped 20.89 points or 0.72% to 2,882.71, KOSPI Composite Index plummeted 25.76 points or 1.32% to 1,919.17 and Taiwan Weighted dived 95.22 points or 1.27% to 7,388.79.

On the other hand only Nikkei 225 rose marginally 2.82 points or 0.03% to 9,012.47.