Asia-Pacific markets mostly fall as yen weakens to fresh 38-year lows; South Korea inflation in focus

Asia-Pacific markets mostly fell on Tuesday, despite gains on Wall Street that saw the Nasdaq Composite reached a new record on the strength of tech stocks.

The index was led by gains in Microsoft, Apple and chipmaker Nvidia. It advanced 0.83% to end at 17,879.3.

Traders in Asia are assessing South Korea’s inflation numbers which came in at 2.4% for June, missing expectations by economists polled by Reuters who predicted a inflation rate of 2.7%.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up 0.64% while the broad-based Topix was up 1.05%.

The Japanese yen weakened to a fresh 38-year low against the greenback, reaching as low as 161.67.

South Korea’s Kospi was 0.68% lower and the small-cap Kosdaq was 1.44% lower after the inflation data was released.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was up 0.6%. Mainland China’s CSI 300 was down 0.15%.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.15%. This comes as the Reserve Bank of Australia released the minutes from its June monetary policy meeting, in which board members discussed raising interest rates but eventually decided to hold rates steady at 4.35%.

Members said they believed it was still possible to achieve the board’s strategy of returning inflation to target within a reasonable time frame without moving from full employment, though they acknowledged this “narrow path” was becoming narrower.

Overnight in the U.S., the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 recorded gains, rising 0.13% and 0.27% respectively.

—CNBC’s Brian Evans and Samantha Subin contributed to this report.