SYDNEY, NSW, Australia-stocks in mainland China and Hong Kong surged on Wednesday, but sellers held the advantage elsewhere.
Markets were spooked by a Moscow declaration that Gazprom would stop gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria on Wednesday due to those countries refusing to pay in roubles.
The euro was at a 5 year low as the U.S. dollar continued to rip into other currencies.
After massive drops on Tuesday, Chinese markets bounced back despite the spread of lockdowns in Shanghai.
If there's a way back to normalcy out of these lockdowns, then we're going to see a large stimulus that would allow consumers to come back with a vengeance and that's when we'll see investors regain confidence," said Jim McCafferty, the managing director for Asia-Pacific equity research at Nomura.
The Shanghai Composite regained 71.86 points or 2.49 percent, to close Wednesday at 2,958. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong was still trading ahead of 75 points at the time of writing.
The Australian All Ordinaries fell 65.70 points or 0.86 percent to 7,538. The Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed that annual inflation had surged from 3.5 to 5.1 per cent.
The Nikkei 225 fell by 313.48 points or 1.17 percent to 26,386 in Japan. New Zealand's S&P NZX 50 declined by 86.79 points or 0.73 percent to 11,726. The Kospi Composite lost 30.14 points in Seoul, South Korea, or 1.13 percent, to 2,638. There was no stopping the dollar on foreign exchange markets. The euro was close to 1.0605 at the Sydney close. The British pound slumped to 1.2560, levels not seen since Brexit. The Japanese yen fell to 127.85. The Swiss franc fell to 0.9650.
The run up to 0.7185 fizzled after the inflation numbers were announced, the Australian dollar attempted a reprieve and by Sydney close the Aussie was trading at 0.7147. Overnight on Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrials plunged 809.28 points or 2.38 percent to close Tuesday at 33,240. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 514.11 points or 3.95 percent to 12,490. The Standard and Poor's 500 mtushed 120.92 points or 2.81 percent to 4,175.