subject: Asian stocks mixed on hiking US jobless claims [print this page] Recovery of the world's biggest economy is becoming more and more sluggish amid weak reading of the unemployment claim data. On the back of this fretful condition, the Asian markets turned red with Japan's Nikkei suffering major losses as the benchmark index was down 1% on Friday.
Unexpected rise in the jobless benefits rose to a greater extent over the weekend. The alarming figures revealed by the US Labor Department influenced investor decisions and the stocks across the world began plunging. The news also affected the Asian exporters' profits hitting the Asian stocks hard. Japanese economy faced the maximum brunt as BOJ's initiative to enter in the currency markets to weaken the Yen could not fetch good fortunes, moreover, Japan's manufacturing and export businesses faced losses due to the restrictions placed by the Chinese government.
According to a Capital Economics report, improvements in the regional economy got hampered by the slowdown news and the manufacturing sector had to pay the price of the declining demand from the US markets backed by the anemic fiscal recovery. Adding to the investor concerns, the report underlines the future conditions of the Asian economies except that of Japan's, which may dip down to 7% in 2011.
Analysts contradict this forecast and believe that the Asian markets will outperform the US and Europe markets despite marking slow economic development as the GDP growth of the developing countries is certainly better than that of the developed nations.
Meanwhile, HK's Hang Seng index jumped 0.3%, while the Singapore, Taiwan and Malaysian index gave a weak performance. The ASX 200 of Australia slipped 0.7% after marking gains in the previous trading session. Conversely, markets in India, South Korea and Indonesia booked marginal profits, while the mainland markets in China remained closed due to the Public holiday.
The Dow Jones industrial average dipped to 0.7% to 10,662.42 on Thursday and continued to plummet on the next day as well.
