TOKYO: Wall Street’s wild afternoon rebound failed to carry through to Asia on Friday, with Japanese shares dropping at the open and U.S. futures sliding. The yen edged up, heading for its best two-week advance since February.Equity benchmarks fell in Tokyo, and saw modest gains in Sydney and Seoul after the S&P 500 Index erased a drop of almost 3 percent in its afternoon rebound -- the biggest upward reversal since 2010. It’s been a week of superlatives for stock traders, after American shares climbed the most in more than nine years on Wednesday. In other markets, 10-year Treasury yields held below 2.80 percent, and oil traded around $45 in New York.“From a time perspective, it’s a historic bull market and when you get that far into the cycle, people get more jittery,” said Sean O’Hara, president at Pacer ETFs. While there was no obvious catalyst for the return to selling that took stocks within a whisker of a bear market, the moves of the past few days sent volatility soaring.- Bloomberg

Source: The Star December 28, 2018 00:22 UTC