Markets in Asia closed mixed on Tuesday as investors in the region digested the release of China's official Purchasing Managers' Index and the Bank of Japan's rates decision. Wall Street had closed lower Monday on news that planned stateside tax cuts could be gradually implemented.
The Nikkei 225 index inched back 0.06 points Tuesday to 22,011.61.
The Hang Seng Index dropped 90.65 points, or 0.3%, to 28,245.54,
In Japan, financial stocks recorded losses of more than 1% while tech shares were mixed: Mitsubishi UFJ closed down 2.6% Nomura Holdings tumbled 2.7% and Sony rose 2.4%
The Bank of Japan on Tuesday kept its monetary policy steady after a two-day meeting. The central bank said it would maintain the short term interest rate at minus 0.1%.
Meanwhile, industrial production in September declined 1.1% from a month ago, government data showed. That compared to a median 1.5% fall estimated by markets,
In Korea, automakers rallied, but several blue-chip tech names declined: Hyundai Motor closed up 3.2% and LG Electronics declined 4%.
Shares of Lotte Shopping surged 7.1% on news that South Korea and China would work on thawing relations that grew icy as a result of Seoul's deployment of an anti-missile system.
Of note, Samsung reported its third-quarter profit almost tripled from a year ago to 14.5 trillion won ($12.91 billion U.S.), boosted by memory chip income. Samsung shares reversed early losses to close up 1.9%.
Australian stocks dwindled slightly, with gains in the consumer staples sub-indexes offset by losses in the heavily-weighted financials sub-index.
Nintendo on Monday announced it was nearly doubling its full-year profit forecast to 120 billion yen ($1.06 billion U.S.) from 65 billion yen.
The consumer electronics company also reported quarterly profit of 23.7 billion yen, topping the 19 billion yen expected, Reuters said. Nintendo stock closed 2.2% higher.
Shares of Softbank tumbled 4.6% by the end of the session following news that talks to combine T-Mobile and Sprint had run into turbulence. Softbank, which owns Sprint, intends to walk away from the talks, Nikkei reported on Monday.
Elsewhere, Glencore announced in a filing that it would be withdrawing the listing of its shares on the Hong Kong Exchange. The withdrawal is expected to come into effect on Jan. 31, 2018, the company said. Shares of the company traded in Hong Kong were up 1.7%.
Against the Japanese yen, the U.S. dollar was stable at 113.11.
The Australian dollar, which had edged down ahead of the release of Chinese data, was little changed on the day. The Aussie dollar traded at $0.7683 U.S. late in the day, after climbing as high as $0.7698 in the session.
CHINA
In Shanghai, the CSI 300 lost three points, or 0.1%, to 4,006.72.
China's official manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index for October came in at 51.6 — missing the 52.0 figure forecast by analysts. The official services PMI, meanwhile, came in at 54.3, below the 55.4 seen last month.
In other markets
In Korea, the Kospi index gained 21.5 points, or 0.9%, to 2,523.43
In Taiwan, the Taiex Index was up 36.93 points, or 0.3%, to 10,793.80
In Singapore, the Straits Times Index faded 1.89 points, or 0.1%, to 3,374.08
In New Zealand, the NZX 50 nicked forward 2.36 points to 8,146.34
In Australia, the ASX 200 faded 10.06 points, or 0.2%, to 5,909.02
