Asian shares mixed, extending Wall Street losses

BANGKOK (AP) — Shares were mixed Monday in Asia after Wall Street logged its worst week since the pandemic began in 2020.

Benchmarks declined in Hong Kong, Seoul and Sydney but rose in Tokyo. Shanghai was little changed. U.S. futures were higher.

Investors have been growing increasingly worried about how aggressively the Federal Reserve, which holds a policy meeting this week, might act to cool rising inflation.

Historically low interest rates, dubbed quantitative easing, or QE, have helped support the broader market as the economy absorbed a sharp hit from the pandemic in 2020 and then recovered over the last two years.

“The FOMC (Fed) meeting dominates the macro calendar this week and is likely to keep risk sentiment on the hesitant side with an end to QE and imminent rates hikes likely to be announced," economists Nicholas Mapa and Robert Carnell of ING said in a commentary.

Some economists believe the U.S. central bank needs to move faster to tamp down surging prices by raising rates. U.S. consumer prices rose 7% in December compared to a year earlier, the biggest increase in nearly four decades.

Rising costs also have raised concerns that consumers will start to ease spending because of the persistent pressure on their wallets. At the same time, outbreaks of the omicron variant of the coronavirus threaten to slow recoveries from the crisis.

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index edged 0.2% higher to 27,588.37, while the Hang Seng in Hong Kong shed 1% to 24,721.49. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.5% to 7,139.50 and India's Sensex dropped 1.7% to 58,072.62.

South Korea's Kospi dropped 1.5% to 2,794.26 on heavy selling of big technology companies like Samsung and LG Chemical. Thailand's SET lost 0.6%.

The Shanghai Composite index gained less than 0.1%, to 3,524.11.

On...