Aerial view of vehicles being driven on the road through the central business district in Beijing, China.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
Asia-Pacific markets mostly fell on Wednesday as investors parsed China’s inflation data and awaited the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision.
Hong Kong Hang Seng index was 0.56% lower, and the mainland CSI 300 declined 0.78% after China’s consumer prices edged up 0.7% from a year earlier, its highest level since February last year. The increase followed a 0.2% rise in October and matched the 0.7% gain expected in a Reuters poll of economists.
Factory-gate prices fell 2.2% in November from a year earlier, missing the forecast of a 2% decline and extending the deflationary stretch into its fourth year. That was compared with a 2.1% fall in October.
Over in Asia, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was flat.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 lost 0.22%, while the Topix was unchanged. South Korea’s Kospi declined 0.12%, while the small-cap Kosdaq rose 0.2%.
Traders are looking ahead to the Federal Reserve’s closely watched interest rate announcement on Wednesday stateside, the final one of the year. Markets largely expect the Fed to trim its benchmark overnight lending rate by another 0.25 percentage point, matching the cuts made in September and October.
Overnight in the U.S., the S&P 500 closed relatively unchanged. The broad market index traded around the flatline, slipping just 0.09% to close at 6,840.51, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.13% to end the day at 23,576.49. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 179.03 points, or 0.38%, to finish at 47,560.29. The 30-stock index was dragged down by a decline in JPMorgan shares on higher-than-expected 2026 expense projections.
—CNBC’s Sean Conlon and Alex Harring contributed to this report.