Investing.com - Asian shares fell on Friday led by Tokyo where reports said Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda held a routine lunch meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Friday to exchange views on economic and financial conditions.
In late January, the BoJ decided in a 5 to 4 vote board vote to add a negative interest rate policy to its monetary easing menu. That move sparked concern about bank earnings and whether the broader policy of aggressive easing was capable of beating deflation.
The Nikkei 225 has fallen all week, and plunged 3.53% by the lunch break, after the market was shut Thursday for a holiday. The S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.95% and the Hang Seng Index dropped 0.74%. Markets in Mainland China have been shut all week for the Lunar New Year holiday.
U.S. stocks staged a late rally on Thursday amid reports that OPEC members could consider slashing record high crude production as a way of rescuing plunging oil prices, but were unable to erase earlier losses triggered by continuing weakness in the financial sector.
The major indices cut sharp losses in the final hour of trading, as reports of a potential production cut by the world's largest oil cartel surfaced from Dow Jones minutes after the close of oil markets on Thursday afternoon. Earlier, U.S. crude futures closed under $26.20 a barrel to hit their lowest closing level since May, 2003. Global oil prices have crashed more than 70% from their peak of $115 a barrel 20 months ago, amid a glut of oversupply on global markets.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 257.78 or 1.62% to 15,656.96, while the NASDAQ Composite index inched down 16.75 or 0.39% to 4,266.84, as investors digested a flurry of market-moving comments throughout the day.
At session lows, the Dow fell more than 400 points. The S&P 500, meanwhile, fell 23.03 or 1.24% to 1,828.83, as nine of 10 sectors closed in the red. Stocks in the Financials, Basic Materials and Industrials sectors lagged, each falling by more than 1.75%. Stocks in the Consumer Services industry led.
The Dow and S&P 500 both fell for the fifth straight day, hovering near two-year lows for most of the session. The S&P 500 fell below a key technical level at 1,810 late in the trading day, before rebounding slightly just before the close.