Asian Shares Mixed, US Mkts Closed For Thanksgiving

Hong Kong: Asian shares were mixed on Friday after US markets were closed Thursday due to the Thanksgiving holiday.US futures and oil prices rose. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index fell 0.4 per cent to 38,183.31 after the government reported that inflation in Tokyo, considered an indicator for national trends, was 2.6 per cent in November, up from 1.8 per cent last month mainly due to a surge in fresh food prices. Core inflation, which excludes fresh food prices, rose modestly to 2.2 per cent year-on-year from 1.8 per cent in October.

Higher inflation tends to reinforce expectations that the Bank of Japan will push ahead with more increases in its benchmark lending rate. That, in turn, pushes up the value of the Japanese yen, which was trading at 149.92 to the dollar early Friday. A week earlier it was trading above 155 yen per dollar. The central bank’s current policy rate is 0.25 per cent. It only ended a long spell of negative rates in March on the presumption that Japan had largely achieved its 2 per cent inflation target.