MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan dropped 1.3 percent, with Australian shares slipping as much as 0.7 percent to two-year lows. Japan's Nikkei shed 1.7 percent to fresh nine-month lows. China's benchmark Shanghai Composite and the blue-chip CSI 300 fell 0.8 percent and 0.9 percent, respectively, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng was off 0.7 percent.
TOKYO: Japan’s stock market has regained US$334bil in value this year after crawling out of the worst quarterly performance since 2008. But the bounce isn’t enough to get everyone back.
A gauge of fund manager demand for Japanese equities slid this month to the lowest since November 2016, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a April 17 report, citing concerns about the outlook for earnings.
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