Asian shares down on ongoing oil slide
Brent crude was down 2.1 per cent on Tuesday.
Brent crude was down 2.1 per cent on Tuesday.
Asian shares were mostly down today (January 13th) as investors traded cautiously amid an ongoing slide in oil prices, which extended their slide due to weakening demand in Europe and Asia. Brent crude was down 2.1 per cent at $46.45 (£30.77) a barrel.
Sentiment was hampered by last week's US non-farm payrolls report. US stocks fell on Friday as the report showed an unexpectedly weak reading on wage growth, although 252,000 new jobs were added in December and the unemployment rate dropped to 5.6 per cent.
"Today's drop is due to negative news accumulated during the long week-end," Takuya Takahashi, an analyst at Daiwa Securities in Tokyo, told Reuters. "Even US jobs data were mixed, and US earnings weren't good."
The Shanghai Composite Index was up 0.1 per cent, while South Korea's KOSPI lost 0.1 per cent and Australian shares fell 0.3 per cent. Tokyo's Nikkei tumbled 1.4 per cent.
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