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BEIJING, Feb. 23 (AP) Asian shares rose on Thursday after Wall Street’s biggest one-day drop in two months as minutes from the Federal Reserve meeting showed officials expected U.S. interest rates to remain high to combat a stubborn currency. swell.
Shanghai, Hong Kong and Seoul lead the way. Japanese markets were closed for a holiday. rising oil prize.
Stocks fell on Wall Street on Wednesday after minutes from the Federal Reserve’s most recent board meeting showed members expected a “sustained rise” in its key lending rate to slow the economy. That dampened hopes that spending cuts could begin as early as the end of the year.
“Long-term rates need to be higher,” Vishnu Varathan of Mizuho Bank said in a note.
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The Shanghai Composite rose 0.1 percent to 3,294.68 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.5 percent to 20,524.60.
Seoul’s Kospi rose 1.2 percent to 2,447.70, while Sydney’s S and P-ASX 200 fell 0.3 percent to 7,289.70.
New Zealand and Jakarta rose, while Singapore fell.
Global share prices have been falling on concerns that inflation may not cool as quickly or smoothly as traders had hoped.
Traders worry that the Fed and other central banks may be willing to push the global economy into recession to fight inflation, which has remained stuck near multi-decade highs despite aggressive rate hikes over the past year.
Traders have begun canceling bets that the Fed could cut interest rates later this year. They expect the Fed to raise rates by at least two more quarter-point percentage points. Some believe the U.S. central bank could revert to unusually large increases, doubling profit margins.
The Fed’s key lending rate is 4.50% to 4.75%, up from near zero a year ago. It has said it does not expect to make cuts this year.
The minutes of the Fed meeting showed that a “minority” of officials favored raising the benchmark interest rate by half a basis point at the last meeting, twice as much as the central bank decided.
Earlier, data on employment, retail sales and inflation suggested economic activity remained strong.
On Wall Street, the benchmark S&P 500 index fell 0.2% to 3,991.05. Year-to-date, the S&P has pared gains to 3.9% from a peak of 8.9%.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.3% to 33,045.09. The Nasdaq edged up 0.1 percent to 11,507.07.
Traders see a three-in-four chance that the Fed will raise rates by a quarter of a percentage point at its next meeting in March, according to CME Group. They put the chance of a 0.50 percentage point hike at 27%.
A month ago, traders saw about a one-in-five chance the Fed would not raise rates at all in March.
In energy markets, benchmark U.S. crude rose 37 cents to $74.32 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell $2.41 to $73.95 on Wednesday.
Brent crude, the basis for internationally traded oil prices, rose 37 cents to $80.82 a barrel in London. It fell $2.45 to $80.60 in the previous session.
The dollar fell to 134.95 yen from 134.99 yen. The euro fell to $1.0601 from $1.0650. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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