Inventory actions, currencies, inflation information for China

Stock movements, currencies, inflation data for China

Reflections from pedestrians on an electronic stock indicator on the window of an investment firm in Tokyo, Japan.

Toshifumi Kitamura | AFP | Getty Images

SINGAPORE – Asia Pacific stocks fell early Tuesday after a tech sell-off that weighed on major US indices overnight.

The Japanese Nikkei 225 was down 0.97% while the Topix was down 0.6%. South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.57%.

In Australia, the ASX 200 was down 0.43%.

US markets fell overnight as investors left big tech stocks like Microsoft and Apple. The Nasdaq Composite suffered the largest loss, down 2.5%.

China’s April inflation data will be an investor watch list. Analysts polled by Reuters believe that Chinese consumer prices rose 1% yoy last month and accelerated from 0.4% in March.

China is also expected to publish the results of its once in a decade census.

Elsewhere in the region, the Southeast Asian countries Malaysia and the Philippines are expected to report first quarter gross domestic product data.

Analysts in a Reuters poll predict that Malaysia’s economy will contract 2% year-on-year from January to March and the Philippine economy will contract 3% over the same period.

Currencies and oil

In the forex market, the US dollar was at 90.238 against a basket of its competitors in early Asian trading.

The Japanese yen changed hands at $ 108.87 per dollar, while the Australian dollar gained 0.11% against the greenback to $ 0.7838.

In the oil markets, US crude oil futures fell 0.06% to $ 64.88 a barrel, while the global benchmark Brent fell 0.1% to $ 68.25 a barrel.

– CNBC’s Thomas Franck contributed to this report.