Asia-Pacific markets mostly fell Friday as investor sentiment turned cautious, following an overnight selloff stateside.
The Nikkei 225 nose-dived 424.7 points, or 1.4%, to 29,792.05.
Japan’s central bank concluded its two-day monetary policy meeting. It announced a raft of measures that included a decision to widen the range at which the 10-year Japanese government bond yield is allowed to fluctuate from the target level to between plus and minus 0.25%.
Still, banking and financial stocks in the region saw some gains.
Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group rose 1.9%, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group was up nearly 2%, Mizuho Financial added 1.4% and Nomura was up 1.3%.
The Japanese yen changed hands at 108.74 per U.S. dollar, strengthening from an earlier level around 109.12.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng reversed 414.78 points, or 1.4%, to 28,990.94.
In Korea, tech names sold off as shares of Samsung Electronics fell 1.2%, SK Hynix declined 2.8% and LG Electronics lost 1.6%.
In Singapore, DBS Group rose 0.6% and OCBC added 0.3% in afternoon trade.
Australian stocks shared in the general decline. The energy dropped 2% and the materials sectors declined 1.4%, while the heavily-weighted financials sub-index finished down 0.3%.
In the banking sector, ANZ and Westpac eked out gains of 0.3% each.
The Australian dollar rose 0.12% to $0.7765.
In other markets
In China, the CSI 300 doffed 134.68 points, or 2.6%, to 5,007.09.
In Taiwan, the Taiex lost 217.6 points, or 1.3%, to 16,070.24.
In Korea, the Kospi index slumped 26.48 points, or 0.9%, to 3,079.53.
In Singapore, the Straits Times index dropped 3.12 points, or 0.1%, to 3,134.54.
In New Zealand, the NZX 50 bucked the trend and gained 19.08 points, or 0.2%, to 12,515.22
In Australia, the ASX 200 fell 37.69 points, or 0.6%, to 6,708.22.
