Asia stock markets mixed, Japan's Nikkei jumps

BANGKOK (AP) ? Japan's benchmark stock index jumped Friday as the yen continued to retreat against the dollar and investors cheered the new government's plans to boost the economy. Other Asian stock markets were mixed.

Evan Lucas of IG Markets in Melbourne said he expect to see surges in Japan's Nikkei 225 index after Yasutoshi Nishimura, a senior vice minister of the Japanese government's Cabinet Office, commented that the yen would fall further. The Nikkei in Tokyo rose 2 percent to 10,832.48.

The recent decline in the yen's value against the dollar and drops against other major currencies have been driven by expectations that Japan's central bank will try to engineer inflation by increasing the amount of money in circulation.

The bank has been under pressure from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office a month ago, to do more to end Japan's prolonged spell of falling prices known as deflation. The ultimate aim is to create a recovery for Japan's moribund economy.

South Korea's Kospi fell amid fears that the exporters could be slammed by Japan's dropping yen, which makes Japanese products less expensive overseas. The benchmark fell 1.1 percent to 1,943.82. Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 0.2 percent to 23,550.21. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.4 percent to 4,829.40.

Europe's stock markets were broadly higher Thursday amid signs the continent's services and manufacturing slump was easing. Surveys showing a smaller-than-forecast contraction in both manufacturing and services in the 17-country eurozone this month.

Markets shrugged off news from Germany's banking sector, where Commerzbank said it planned as many as 6,000 job cuts over the next three years. The country's second-largest bank, which was bailed out by the government in 2009, expects to cut between 4,000 and 6,000 jobs by 2016.

Grim employment data in Spain also failed to dent markets optimism. Spain's unemployment rate shot up to a record 26.02 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, leaving almost 6 million Spaniards out of work, the country's statistics agency said.

On Wall Street, a sharp drop in Apple's stock pulled the Nasdaq down after the tech giant warned of weaker sales. Other stock market indexes posted slight gains.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.3 percent to close at 13,825.33. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose less than 0.1 percent to 1,494.82. The Nasdaq composite lost 0.7 percent to 3,130.38.

Benchmark oil for March was down 6 cents to $95.89 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract gained 72 cents to finish at $95.95 a barrel on the Nymex on Thursday.

In currencies, the euro fell to $1.3360 from $1.3371 late Thursday in New York. The dollar rose to 90.54 yen from 89.96 yen.

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/asia-stock-markets-mixed-japans-nikkei-jumps-032805220--finance.html

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