Japan leads Asian markets decline

Despite a positive close on the Wall Street overnight, the Asian equity markets opened on a mixed note, and drifted lower thereon, mainly driven by steep losses in the Japanese stocks and weaker oil prices.

Japan’s TOPIX index dropped the most in two and a half weeks as more than half of the companies on the index went ex-dividend, resulting in a sell-off across the Japanese markets.

While losses in the energy and resource sector stocks on the back of ongoing oil-price weakness, in wake of fizzling output cut hopes, also added to the bearish sentiment around the region’s indices.

Meanwhile, Japan’s Nikkei 225 now drops -1.63% to 16,411, the Australian S&P/ASX 200 turned negative at 5,405, while the Chinese equities ignored upbeat consumer sentiment data , with the benchmark Shanghai Composite index losing -0.27%, while CSI300 index declines -0.31%. Hong Kong markets drop -0.62% to trade around 23,420 levels.