Investing.com - Shares in Asia fell on Monday as investors cast a wary eye over steps by President Donald Trump to bar travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries, fearing a backlash and also looked ahead to central bank policy reviews this week, including the Bank of Japan and U.S. Federal Reserve..
Several countries have criticized President Trump's latest executive order to block refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States for a four-month period and protests at airports in San Francisco, New York and other sites broke out against the policy.
Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 0.73% after data showed that December retail sales rose 0.6% from the previous year, well below the 1.3% increase expected.
Toshiba fell 5% after the Asahi Shimbun reported that several trust banks will sue Toshiba after its share price dropped due to the accounting scandal. Several media reports also reported that Toshiba chairman Shigenori Shiga and Toshiba's U.S. nuclear subsidiary Westinghouse President Daniel Roderick will both step down.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 dropped 0.96%, seeing broad based losses across all sub-indexes except for its gold sub-index, which was up 1.12% as Newcrest Mining shares were up 0.85 percent on an upbeat production report for the December quarter.
Markets in China, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong were shut on Monday for the Lunar New Year holiday.
Last week, U.S. stocks were mixed after the close on Friday, as gains in the Healthcare, Telecoms and Technology sectors led shares higher while losses in the Oil & Gas, Financials and Consumer Goods sectors led shares lower.
At the close in NYSE, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.04%, while the S&P 500 index declined 0.09%, and the NASDAQ Composite index gained 0.10%.