Hong Kong shares fall 3%, Asia continues Wall Street’s sell-off; The Bank of Japan keeps rates on hold

The Bank of Japan kept its monetary policy unchanged, broadly in line with expectations.

The central bank kept its negative interest rate at -0.1% and reiterated its target to keep the 10-year Japanese government bond yield at 0%.

“Japan’s economy, despite being hit by factors such as high commodity prices, has picked up as the resumption of economic activity has progressed,” the Bank of Japan said in its policy statement. Report On Friday, Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s final meeting concluded.

– Jihye Lee

Hong Kong’s Hong Kong index saw sharp losses on Friday morning, with consumer discretionary stocks down 3.77%, healthcare stocks down nearly 3% and tech stocks down 1.56%.

JD.com fell 11.04%, while Geely Automobile fell 5.49%. BYD lost 5.2% and Baidu lost 4.94%.

Property stocks such as Country Garden also saw heavy losses by 2.73%.

Alibaba fell 2.96% and was one of the leading companies below.

Japan approves appointment of Kazo Ueda as next Governor of Bank of Japan Kyoto reported.

The approval by the House of Councilors sets the stage for the government to formally appoint Ueda, Kyodo reported.

Kyoto said parliament has approved Shinichi Uchida and Ryoso Himino as Japan’s next vice governors.

The yield on 10-year Japanese government bonds fell to 0.5%, the upper ceiling of the central bank’s tolerance range.

Gerry Fowler, equity strategist at UBS, says an interest rate hike in Europe should lift share prices in a sector by 20%.

Fowler also revealed that many stocks in the sector are trading below the overlooked benchmark because “no one has really acknowledged” this phenomenon, despite “structurally higher” earnings potential.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read more about the sector here.

– Ganesh Rao

Bond yields are rising as markets jitter on fears the US Federal Reserve will keep interest rates higher for longer. The 2-year Treasury rose to 5% earlier this week for the first time since 2007

As rates rise, it becomes harder to find stocks that can compete in terms of yield — but there are some. CNBC Pro uses FactSet to screen global stocks with a yield greater than 5% of the MSCI World Index.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here.

– Weissen Don

The Bank of Japan is unlikely to make any changes to its monetary policy at its upcoming meeting, according to a Reuters poll.

During the two-day meeting, which marks Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s final meeting before his term ends in April, the central government is expected to maintain its aggressively hawkish stance and keep its key interest rate at -0.1%.

Goldman Sachs Three main drivers for Kuroda’s no-change were cited: the closeness of the meeting’s fiscal year-end, ongoing wage negotiations, and Kuroda’s long-held view that “premature rate hikes delayed Japan’s exit from deflation.”

Goldman analysts wrote that “some caution still needs to be taken” and that they think “caution is warranted if Governor Kuroda takes responsibility for cleaning up his legacy yield curve control policy.”

Kazuo Ueda was nominated as the next BOJ governor.

– Lee Ying Shan

Japan’s household spending fell 0.3% year-on-year in January, government data showed.

That was better than economists polled by Reuters expected to see a 0.1% drop from a year earlier. Home spending fell 1.3% in December.

– Jihye Lee

South Korea’s current account balance returned to a deficit of $4.52 billion in January. Bank of Korea data showed.

This comes on the back of a current account surplus of $2.68 billion in December.

The January report marks the first time since August 2022 that South Korea’s current account balance has fallen into deficit territory.

The Korean won was at 1,323.92 against the US dollar.

It’s not just regional and technology-focused banks that are under pressure on Thursday.

The big four U.S. banks — JP Morgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup — all underperform the broader market. Shares of Wells Fargo and Bank of America fell more than 6%.

In total, the collapses of the four banks represented a loss of about $56 billion in market value on the day.

– Jesse Pound, Christopher Hayes

Shares fell on Thursday, accelerating losses in the final hours of trading.

The S&P 500 fell 1.85% to 3,918.32, while the Dow Jones industrial average closed down 543.54 points, or 1.66%, at 32,254.86. The Nasdaq Composite closed down 2.05% at 11,338.35.

– Samantha Subin

Bank of America analyst Brad Lin raised his price objective on the Taiwanese semiconductor maker’s US-listed stock to $115 from $105. The new target represents 26.6% from Wednesday’s close.

“Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is a key beneficiary, with increasing applications of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI led by ChatGPT among our top 20 global AI stock picks,” Lin wrote.

“Thanks to the substantial computational requirements of running and training AI models, we think generative AI should serve as one of the best drivers.”

– Sarah Min

Initial job claims reached 211,000 in the week ended March 4, the highest level of the year and since December 24.

Continuing claims hit an annual high of 1.718M in the week of February 25. That also marked the highest level since December 17.

– Samantha Subin, Gina Brancola