ASIA MARKETS: Asia Stocks Fall, With Japan Down Sharply

By Laura He and Michael Kitchen, MarketWatch

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) -- Japan received some mixed economic data on Friday, but stocks slid anyway, mostly due to a stronger yen.

The Nikkei Average retreated 1.4%, marking its biggest drop since mid-May. The closing level of 15,095.00 was the lowest in more than week. For the week, the index posted a 1.7% loss, snapping a five-week winning streak.

The broader Topix index settled 0.8% lower on Friday.

Slamming equities was a stronger yen (USDJPY), which traded at Yen101.42 per dollar from Yen101.66 per dollar on Thursday.

On the same day, Japan's official data showed the country's unemployment rate dropped to 3.5% in May, the lowest level since 1997, and the May core consumer-price index rose 3.4% from a year earlier, in line with market forecasts.

However, household spending fell a price-adjusted 8% in May compared with a year earlier, indicating the shadow of the consumption-tax hike still looms. The fall was much worse than a 2% decrease forecast by economists in a Wall Street Journal poll.

Meanwhile, other Asian markets closed lower. The Shanghai Composite Index inched down 0.1%, Sydney's S&P/ASX 200 declined 0.4%, and South Korea's Kospi Composite index lost 0.3%. However, Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index picked up 0.1%.

In Japan, tech exporters were among top underperformers, with semiconductor manufacturer Renesas Electronics Corp. down 3.3%, IT service provider Fujitsu off 2%, and industrial robot maker Fanuc Corp. lower by 1.9%.

Other market movers included Standard Chartered PLC , which tumbled 4.5% in Hong Kong trading, after the bank issued a profit warning.

China data: Slowdown surfaces in profit numbers

Chinese data are out on overall earnings at the nation's largest industrial corporations, with growth still strong but slowing.

For May, profit was up 8.9% from a year earlier, a robust pace but still 0.7 of a point below what it was in April.

More importantly, the gains are lagging what major Chinese enterprises saw last year. Much of the profit data are reported on a cumulative basis, and on those terms, the January-May profit growth was 9.8%, marking the only time the number has fallen below 10% in the past 12 months, with the exception of this year's January-February Lunar New Year period -- always a slow time -- when the expansion rate cooled to 9.4%.

The fact that industrial profit rose 12.2% last year underlines the slowdown now facing Chinese companies.

Then again, not all types of enterprise are equal: Private companies managed a 12.9% profit gain, foreign-funded companies (including, for the data's purposes, those from Hong Kong and Macau) saw their earnings rise 12.4%, but the state-owned corporations saw profit improve by a slim 3.4%.

(Some material in this report is from MarketWatch's Asia Stocks blog.)

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