HONG KONG (AP) โ Global markets were mixed on Wednesday after a lackluster session on Wall Street, while Tokyo's benchmark index hit its highest level since March 1990 as a weaker yen lifted stock prices. shares of export manufacturers.
The S&P 500 future rose 0.2%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average future was almost unchanged.
Germany's DAX rose 0.4% to 16,745.08 and Paris' CAC 40 rose 0.3% to 7,447.90. Britain's FTSE 100 fell 0.1% to 7,676.91.
Tokyo's Nikkei 225 gained 2.1% to 34,465.00, helped by heavy buying from chipmakers and speculation that the Bank of Japan might not opt โโto change its ultra-loose monetary policy as soon as thought after wages fell for the 20th consecutive month in November.
A weakening yen against the U.S. dollar also lifted share prices of exporting manufacturers such as computer chip maker Kyocera Corp., which rose 5.7%. Sony Group Corp. rose 3.8% and robot maker Fanuc Corp. advanced 2.8%.
Japan's benchmark index is trading at levels last seen in 1990, before the implosion of its โbubble economy,โ when property and other asset prices soared to stratospheric levels.
The US dollar rose to 144.91 Japanese yen on Wednesday from 144.48 yen. It had fallen last week on expectations that the Bank of Japan might be willing to change course after years of keeping its benchmark interest rate at -0.1%.
Elsewhere in Asia, Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 0.6% to 16,097.28, and the Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.5% to 2,877.70.
South Korea's Kospi lost 0.8% to 2,541.98, after the country's unemployment rate hit its highest level since January 2022, according to Statistics Korea.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.7% to 7,468.50.
On Tuesday, the S&P 500 fell 0.1% after its best day in almost two months. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.4% and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.1%.
The US government will give its latest monthly update on consumer inflation on Thursday. That is one of the measures on which the Federal Reserve relies to decide its interest rate policy.
On Friday, the big companies in the S&P 500 will begin reporting their results for the final three months of 2023. The general expectation is that companies in the index will report modest growth in earnings per share from a year ago.
In other trading Wednesday, a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude oil lost 14 cents to $72.10 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international standard, gained 2 cents to $77.61.
The euro rose to $1.0946 from $1.0931.
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