Investing.com - Asian shares were mixed on Thursday as Tokyo jumped, but Greater China fell with investors reacting to regional data sets and parsing Fed language on the rate hike path for 2018.
Japan's Nikkei 225 jumped 1.32%. Nintendo shares rose 0.94% after the company on Wednesday announced third-quarter profit rose 261 percent to 116.5 billion yen ($1.07 billion), beating forecasts. The company also said it now projected it will sell 15 million units of its Switch console in the 12 months ending March 2018. That was above the 14 million units forecast.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.83%. Australia reported building approvals slumped 20% in December, compared to a 8.0% drop seen on month.
In Greater China, the Shanghai Composite fell 1.11% and the Hang Seng index slipped 0.35%. The Caixin/Markit China manufacturing PMI for January came in at 51.5, meeting an expected steady reading of 51.5 seen on Thursday. On Wednesday, the official manufacturing PMI came in at 51.3, below the 51.5 seen and the 51.6 level in December.
Overnight, U.S. stocks were higher after the close on Wednesday, as gains in the Utilities, Technology and Financials sectors led shares higher.
At the close in NYSE, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.28%, while the S&P 500 index added 0.05%, and the NASDAQ Composite index gained 0.12%.
The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged at the end of its two-day policy meeting on Wednesday, keeping them in a range between 1.25% - 1.50%.
The Federal Reserve signalled that it would push ahead on its monetary policy tightening path as economic activity has been rising at a solid rate, while inflation remained low but is expected to "move up" in the coming months.
"The Committee expects that, with further gradual adjustments in the stance of monetary policy, economic activity will expand at a moderate pace and labor market conditions will remain strong," The Federal Reserve noted in its monetary policy statement. "Inflation on a 12‑month basis is expected to move up this year and to stabilize around the Committee's 2 percent objective over the medium term."
The somewhat upbeat outlook on inflation comes as data on Monday showed that the Core PCE Price Index, the Fed's preferred measure of inflation, rose 1.5% in December.