Shares advanced Friday in Asia after news that US consumer inflation slowed last month pushed Wall Street benchmarks higher. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index fell 1.3 per cent to 26,119.52 on speculation that the Bank of Japan might relent and tighten its ultra-loose monetary policy as the yield on 10-year Japanese government bonds was pushed beyond the central bank’s cap of 0.5 per cent on heavy selling ahead of next week’s policy-setting meeting. The BOJ has kept its key interest rate at minus 0.1 per cent, maintaining that downward pressure from a likely recession is a bigger risk than inflation, which has remained at relatively moderate levels in Japan. Shares in Fast Retailing, which shot up earlier in the week on news it would hike wages by as much as 40 per cent, dropped 6.4 per cent after the company reported a weaker-than-expected profit in the previous quarter. China reported its trade surplus ballooned to a record $877.6 billion in 2022 as exports rose 7 per cent despite weakening US and European demand and anti-virus controls that temporarily shut down Shanghai and other industrial centres. The country’s politically sensitive trade surplus expanded by 29.7 per cent from 2021’s record, already the highest ever for any economy.
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