Asian Shares: Australian Shares Fall on Iron-Ore-Weakness

By Chao Deng 

        Stocks in Australia fell on further weakness in iron ore but most other shares in the region were mostly little changed Thursday and the Shanghai market remained up nearly 4% so far this week amid more stimulus measures from Beijing.
        Australia's S&P ASX 200 was down 0.7%, led lower by resources shares. Fortescue Metals Group Ltd. fell 4.8%, while BHP Billiton Ltd. and Rio Tinto Ltd. lost 1.6% each. The move coincided with a Reuters survey showing expectations for further weakness in iron ore, with 2015 prices forecast to average $56 per metric ton, down from a previous projection of $68 a ton made in January.
        Most other benchmarks in Asia Pacific were close to flat, continuing a recovery in the region from a selloff in European bonds that spread globally to a range of asset classes.
        The Shanghai Composite Index and Hang Seng Index were both flat. The Hang Seng Index is down more than 1% this week, even after China's central bank cut interest rates on Sunday for a third time in six months.
        The latest support for China's economy is a directive by China's Finance Ministry, central bank and top banking regulator to help local government restructure trillions of dollars in debt. The directive was issued earlier this week to governments across the country.
        China's onshore yuan traded at its strongest since early May, after China guided its currency up, setting the yuan to dollar fixing at the strongest level in over one year.
        Investors in the region also turned to Tencent Holdings Ltd., whose Hong Kong-listed shares rose 2.6%, after the Chinese Internet giant's latest results showed it is making progress in generating more revenue from advertising. Still, its net profit for the first three months rose 6.6% from a year earlier, a significant slowdown from the fourth quarter when net profit jumped 50%.
        The Nikkei Stock Average was down 0.7%, breaking four days of gains, its longest winning streak since February.
        Japan is due to release its April preliminary machine tool orders data on Thursday. Tool orders were up 14.6% on the year in March. The report is likely to serve as a useful indicator of future industrial activity.
        In Korea, the Kospi Composite Index was roughly flat. Shares of Amorepacific Corp. were up more than 3% although they were paring gains, after the cosmetics giant reported a 72% jump in net profit during the first three months of the year, as overseas earnings more than doubled. The company earlier this week surpassed steelmaker Posco to become South Korea's seventh most valuable company by market capitalization, with a value of 22.7 trillion won ($21 billion).
        Anjani Trivedi, Jonathan Cheng and Michael Kitchen contributed to this article.
        Write to Chao Deng at Chao.Deng@wsj.com
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        (END) Dow Jones Newswires

        May 13, 2015 22:56 ET (02:56 GMT)

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