Sentiment turned negative at the end of the week with recession fears returning when the Bank of England (BOE) issued a warning of a prolonged downturn ahead of the release of the United States (US) jobs report.
It is understood that the BOE decided to raise interest rates by 50 basis points at 1.75%, in addition to predicting more aggressive increases as inflation is projected to jump 13% before the end of the year.
The streak, Wall Street yesterday ended the session mixed when the Dow Jones Industrial dropped 0.26% at 32,726.82, the S&P 500 remained at 4,151.94 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.41% at 12,720.58.
Britain's FTSE 100 index was little changed compared to the pan-European STOXX 600 index which made small gains following some strong corporate reports.
In addition, China's conduct of military exercises near Taiwan and missile tests that landed in Japan's exclusive economic zone upset the broader market.
As a result, most indices opened flat with Japan's Nikkei and Topix slightly higher while the Kospi added 0.52% and the Kosdaq reached 0.45% while the broader MSCI Asia Pacific index outside Japan added 0.19%.
Investors in the Asian region may also focus on the minutes of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) meeting published today.
Currency trends saw the dollar index drop from 106.5 to 105.724 while the Japanese Yen was at $132.84 and the Euro added 0.59% at $0.84205.
Meanwhile, the 2-year treasury yield was down 7.1 basis points at 3.0366% while the 10-year yield was down 6.3 basis points at 2.6846%.
For commodities, crude oil prices fell to pre-Russia-Ukraine crisis levels with WTI down 0.35% at $88.23 and Brent futures down 0.38% at $93.76.
