Asian stocks fell, with the benchmark regional index on course for its first loss in three days, as the yen’s gain weighed on Japanese exporters and United States jobs data missed estimates.
Bloomberg News reported that Mazda Motor Corporation, an automaker that gets 30 per cent of its sales in North America, dropped 4.1 per cent in Tokyo.
Fonterra Shareholders Fund tumbled 3.7 per cent in Wellington after China and Russia halted imports of milk powder from Fonterra Cooperative Group Limited, the world’s largest dairy exporter.
Tianneng Power International Limited, a maker of storage batteries, tumbled as much as 19 percent before it was suspended from trading in Hong Kong.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 0.2 per cent to 135.3 as of 7:37 p.m. Tokyo time, with more than five stocks dropping for every four that rose. The gauge rose 0.1 per cent last week, capping a sixth week of gains, the longest such winning streak since the period ended Jan. 4.
“Japan is still very choppy for me, to be honest,” Chris Weston, chief market strategist at IG Markets Ltd. in Melbourne, said by telephone.
The United States payrolls figures “weren’t significantly weak enough to say we’re definitively putting tapering off the table, but didn’t certainly suggest there’s rampant recovery going on in the jobs market. There’s a recovery, but it’s not enough to suspend the bond-buying program.”
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index advanced 1.3 per cent last month after China pledged to do more to support a transition from reliance on exports to domestic demand in the world’s second-largest economy.
Shares on the gauge traded at 13.2 times estimated earnings as of Auguts2, compared with 15.5 times for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and 13.8 times for the Stoxx Europe 600 Index.