Asia: Most stocks down ahead of EU meeting, China rises on stimulus hopes

Most Asian stocks fell on Wednesday ahead of an emergency meeting between Eurozone finance ministers and Greek president.

The summit, which kicks off at 16:30, will see Greece's Yanis Varoufakis make his debut appearance as he attempts to persuade his peers of the benefits of his bridging programme.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 0.87%, also impacted by a fall in oil and gold prices.

Brent crude fell 1.16% to $55.78 per barrel at the midday mark, according to the ICE. Gold futures for April delivery fell $9.30 an ounce to $1,232.20.

Meanwhile, Iraq and Iran joined Saudi Arabia in cutting their March crude prices for Asia to the lowest level in more than a decade.

It comes after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries left its members’ output targets unchanged at a meeting last November.

However, Shanghai’s main index continued to rise by 0.51% driven by a record low inflation reading and hopes of more policy support.

Chinese inflation fell to a five-year low in January, according to reports on Tuesday. China’s consumer-price index rose only 0.8% year-on-year for January, down from 1.5% recorded in December.

IG analyst Christ Beauchamp said: “Disappointing Chinese price inflation numbers have taken a chunk out of copper, even if supply disruptions meant that the decline was not as severe as expected.”

Australia’s ASX also fell 0.54% despite an improvement in consumer confidence in February to 8% from 2.4% the month before and home loans at 2.7% in December against expectations of 2% and the previous month’s -0.4%.

The Japanese market was closed on Wednesday for a public holiday.