The final day of the stock market week has begun with a decline or sideways movement for several leading indexes in Asia.
Hong Kong was, after a few hours of trading, the exception with an increase for the Hang Seng index of around 1.1 percent.
In Tokyo, both the Nikkei 225 index and the broader Topix showed a decline, specifically 0.9 and 0.8 percent down, respectively.
In Shanghai and Shenzhen, the composite indexes were down, 0.1 and minus 0.4 percent, respectively.
In South Korea, the Kospi index showed a decline of 0.2 percent.