Asian stocks were mixed on Wednesday despite of the strong performance seen in Wall Street, which reached its third straight day of gains in the previous session.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 retreated from the gains its made earlier in the morning as it went down by 0.13 percent due to the yen going down close to its session lows.
Automakers such as Toyota and Honda Motor went down by 0.55 percent and 0.13 percent respectively. As for tech stocks, they were mostly down in the morning with Sony down by 0.39 percent.
Manufacturers held on to gains, aside from Fanuc Manufacturing which dropped 0.13 percent. Energy stocks were also up.
The Kospi index of South Korea went up by 0.97 percent with Samsung Electronics going up by 2.82 percent and SK Hynix gaining 0.77 percent.
Following Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin’s jail sentence of two years and six months, Lotte Corporation lost 5.57 percent. Stocks for Lotte Shopping went down by 0.46 percent.
The Hang Seng Index of Hong Kong went up by 0.62 percent, with China Construction Bank going up by 1.29 percent, AIA by 0.65 and HSBC by 0.81 percent.
Tencent went up by 1.56 percent while other tech stocks were mixed. Lenovo dropped 0.26 percent and Sunny Optical gained 2.18 percent.
The Shanghai Composite and the Shenzhen Composite went down by 0.03 percent and 0.06 percent respectively.
Markets in Vietnam were closed on Wednesday due to the Lunar New Year holidays.