Asia shares drop as Treasury yields hit fresh highs

Asia shares drop as Treasury yields hit fresh highs

TOKYO: Asia's share markets struggled on Wednesday as U.S. Treasury yields hit fresh two-year highs and a global technology stock sell-off unsettled investors worrying about inflation and bracing for tighter U.S. monetary policy. Oil prices hit their highest since 2014 amid an outage on a pipeline from Iraq to Turkey and global political tensions, stoking fears of inflation becoming more persistent and propping up the dollar, which hovered near one-week highs. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan reflected the sombre tone, trading down 0.1% in mid-morning trade after closing lower for four days straight. Australia .AXJO lost half a percent, while Japan's Nikkei slid 1.8% as technology stocks fell and worries over new curbs on businesses to halt a record surge in coronavirus cases curbed risk appetite. Shares in Sony Group slumped to their lowest level since late October, losing as much as a tenth of their value after gaming rival Microsoft said it will buy developer Activision Blizzard. Elsewhere, South Korea's Kospi lost 0.3%, while China's blue-chip index was flat and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index bucked the downtrend to rise 0.1%. "There's probably money rotating out of the United States as there's such a concentrated pool