Mount Fuji and the Shinjuku skyline in Tokyo, Japan, on Friday, Feb. 14, 2025. Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota\/Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images<\/p>\n
Asia-Pacific markets fell Wednesday as investors assessed trade data from Japan and its new government. <\/p>\n
Japanese exports<\/a> in September snapped four months of declines, climbing 4.2% year on year, as shipments to Asia saw robust growth, partially offsetting the drop in exports to the U.S.<\/p>\n Exports, however, missed analysts’ expectations of a 4.6% rise, according to median estimates in a Reuters poll of economists.<\/p>\n Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and\u00a0her new cabinet were sworn<\/a>\u00a0in on Tuesday, with her former rival in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s leadership race, Shinjiro Koizumi, named defense minister and Satsuki Katayama becoming Japan’s first female finance minister.<\/p>\n Japan’s Nikkei 225<\/a> was down 1.26%, leading losses in Asia, while the Topix index lost 0.18%. Shares of SoftBank plunged over 10%, building on their 0.26% drop on Tuesday. Shares had gained 8.5% on Monday.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, the Nikkei briefly set a new intraday record of 49,945.95, before retreating after Takaichi won the parliamentary vote to become Prime Minister.<\/p>\n South Korea’s Kospi index was down 0.26%, while the small-cap Kosdaq fell 0.25%. Shares of LG Chem soared as much as 10% after Palliser Capital urged the chemicals company to revamp its board and buy back shares, according to a Reuters report<\/a>.<\/p>\n Australia’s\u00a0S&P\/ASX 200<\/a> started the day down 0.73%, pulling back from earlier gains on Tuesday after rare earth stocks briefly rallied on news of a U.S.-Australia critical minerals agreement<\/a>.<\/p>\n Hong Kong Hang Seng index futures were at 25,919, lower than the last close of 26,027.55.<\/p>\n Indian markets are closed for a holiday.<\/p>\n Overnight in the U.S., the\u00a0Dow Jones Industrial Average<\/a>\u00a0set a new closing record, boosted by strong earnings reports from companies such as\u00a0Coca-Cola<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a03M<\/a>, while the\u00a0S&P 500<\/a>\u00a0was relatively unchanged.<\/p>\n The 30-stock index gained 0.47% to close at 46,924.74, and briefly topped 47,000 during the session.<\/p>\n The broad market\u00a0S&P 500<\/a>\u00a0closed just above the flatline at 6,735.35, while the tech-heavy\u00a0Nasdaq Composite<\/a>\u00a0lagged, falling 0.16% to 22,953.67.<\/p>\n \u2014CNBC’s Sean Conlon and Pia Singh contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mount Fuji and the Shinjuku skyline in Tokyo, Japan, on Friday, Feb. 14, 2025. Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota\/Bloomberg via…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[4055,4053,491,79,207,18,19,17,188,4052,190,4054],"class_list":{"0":"post-137250","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markets","8":"tag-asia-economy","9":"tag-breaking-news-asia","10":"tag-breaking-news-markets","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-business-news","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-markets","17":"tag-nikkei-225-index","18":"tag-sp-500-index","19":"tag-world-markets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}