Tokyo: With the West Asia war pushing the price of a barrel of Brent crude oil past $100 and investors watching for what might happen to interest rates, global shares were trading mostly lower on Wednesday.
Increased fighting in West Asia is constricting the global flow of oil, and more costly oil has worsened worries over high inflation.
As of 09.30 GMT, Brent crude, the international standard, was up 2.5 per cent at $100.39 a barrel. Benchmark US crude gained 1.9 per cent to $94.85 a barrel.
France's CAC 40 lost 1.1 per cent in early trading to 8,224.46, while the German DAX declined 0.9 per cent to 25,778.91. Britain's FTSE 100 shed 0.5 per cent to 10,761.27.
The future was nearly unchanged, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.2 per cent.
In Asian trading, Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 lost 0.2 per cent to 65,142.78, while South Korea's Kospi gained 1.4 per cent to 7,051.64.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng dipped 0.2 per cent to 25,274.96. The Shanghai Composite gained 0.3 per cent to 3,951.51.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.1 per cent to 8,911.40.
Taiwan's Taiex edged 0.2 per cent higher, and the Sensex in Mumbai shed 0.9 per cent.
A closely watched report on US inflation comes on Friday. That update will show how much more people were paying in August for groceries, clothes and other costs of living than a year earlier.
Economists expect consumer inflation to have eased a bit, to 3.3 per cent from July's 3.4 per cent. That's well above the 2 per cent target that the Federal Reserve has set as its goal.
The Fed meets next week to decide whether to cut, raise or hold interest rates steady. The traditional move for the Fed when inflation is high is to raise its main interest rate. But US President Donald Trump has been lobbying for lower interest rates.
Japan's central bank will also meet next week to decide on its benchmark rate. Market watchers are expecting an increase, with the question shifting to how much and if there will be more rate hikes this year.
The US Treasury secretary has made public remarks widely seen as critical of Japanese government policies that tend to favour a weak yen.
“Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent delivered an unusually forceful message to yen bears, declaring that traders could bet against him following the joint US-Japan yen intervention on 31 July,” Ng Jing Wen, an analyst at Mizuho Bank, said in a commentary.
In currency trading early Wednesday, the US dollar fell to 153.48 Japanese yen from 153.99. The euro cost $1.1632, inching up from $ 1.1624.