SINGAPORE – Asia-Pacific stocks trading mixed on Thursday morning after the S&P 500 closed higher overnight to an all-time high.
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 fell 0.55%, while the Topix index fell 0.62%. South Korean Kospi also lost 0.32%.
Shares in Australia were up, with the S & P / ASX 200 up 0.39%.
MSCI’s widest index of Asia-Pacific stocks outside Japan was down 0.1%.
Overnight in the United States, the S&P 500 rose 0.15% to a new close of 4,079.95. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 16.02 points to close its trading day at 33,446.26, while the Nasdaq Composite closed about 0.1% lower at 13,688.84.
The steps on Wall Street came when the US Federal Reserve released minutes of its March meeting upholding its accommodative policy. The summary of the meeting indicated that while officials saw the economy growing significantly, they needed much more progress before extremely simple policy changes were possible.
Currencies and oil
The US dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was at 92.41 after falling above 92.8 earlier in the week.
The Japanese yen traded at 109.88 per dollar, stronger than levels above 110.5 against the dollar seen early this week. The Australian dollar changed hands at $ 0.7608 after falling from levels above $ 0.764 yesterday.
Oil prices were lower in the morning of trading hours in Asia, falling 0.28% to $ 62.98 a barrel on the international benchmark for Brent crude oil. US crude oil futures also fell 0.37% to $ 59.55 a barrel.
– CNBC’s Jeff Cox contributed to this report.