BANGKOK (AP) โ Asian stocks were mixed Thursday after U.S. stocks fell on concerns that what seemed like a blip in the battle to reduce inflation could turn into a worrying trend.
Oil prices rose and US futures were stable.
South Korean stocks were little changed after the ruling conservative party suffered a crushing defeat in parliamentary elections. The Kospi rose less than 0.1% to 2,706.96.
The results were a major political blow to President Yoon Suk Yeol, and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo and all of Yoon's top presidential advisers except those in charge of security issues submitted their resignations on Thursday.
Elsewhere in Asia, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 lost 0.4% to 39,442.63 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 0.1% to 17,118.27.
The Shanghai Composite index gained 0.2% to 3,032.01 and the S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.4% to 7,813.60.
The Bangkok SET lost 0.3% and the Taiwan Taiex lost 0.1%.
On Wednesday, the S&P 500 fell 0.9% to 5,160.64. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.1% to 38,461.51 and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.8% to 16,170.36.
Treasury yields rose as bond prices fell, increasing pressure on the stock market, after a report showed inflation was higher last month than economists expected. It is the third consecutive report to suggest that progress in reducing high inflation could be stalled.
For shoppers, this is painful because of the possibility of in-store prices being even higher. For Wall Street, it raises fears that the Federal Reserve will refrain from implementing the interest rate cuts that traders want and have been betting on.
The Federal Reserve has been waiting for more evidence showing that inflation is heading sustainably toward its 2% target. After an encouraging cooldown last year, the fear now is that inflation could remain stagnant after inflation reports for January, February and March came in higher than expected, along with data on the broader economy.
Prices of everything from bonds to gold fell immediately after the release of the morning's inflation data.
The 10-year Treasury yield jumped to 4.54% from 4.36% late Tuesday and is back to where it was in November. The two-year yield, which is moved more by expectations of Fed action, soared further, rising to 4.97% from 4.74%.
Traders sharply reduced bets that the Federal Reserve could begin cutting rates in June. At the beginning of the year, they predicted six or more cuts through 2024.
High interest rates act to undermine inflation by slowing the economy and hurting investment prices. The fear is that leaving rates too high for too long could lead to a recession.
Wall Street's biggest losers on Wednesday included real estate investment trusts, utility companies and other stocks that tend to be hit hardest by high interest rates.
S&P 500 real estate stocks fell 4.1%, the biggest loss by far among the 11 sectors that make up the index. This included a 6.1% drop for office owner Boston Properties and a 5.3% drop for Alexandria Real Estate Equities.
Higher interest rates could chill the real estate industry by making mortgages more expensive. Homebuilder DR Horton fell 6.4%, Lennar sank 5.8% and PulteGroup fell 5.2%.
Major U.S. companies are lining up to report earnings for the first three months of the year, and Delta Air Lines helped kick off the reporting season by posting better-than-expected results.
The airline said it is seeing strong demand for flights around the world and expects the strength to continue into the spring. But it also refrained from raising its profit forecast for the full year. Its shares rose as much as 4% during the morning before falling to a loss of 2.3%.
In other trading early Thursday, benchmark U.S. crude oil was unchanged at $86.21 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Brent crude, the international standard, added 2 cents to $90.50 a barrel.
The US dollar fell to 153.10 Japanese yen from 153.17 yen, trading near a 34-year high. The yen has weakened on expectations that the gap between interest rates in Japan, which are near zero, and those in the United States will remain wide for the foreseeable future.
The euro fell to $1.0734 from $1.0746.
