Investing.com - Shares in Asia fell on Thursday following the Fed move to hike rates as expected for the first time in a year and said three more could come in 2017, with upbeat jobs data in Australia failing to lift equities or a weaker yen aiding Japan exporters.
The Shanghai Composite fell 0.29%, while the S&P/ASX 200 eased 0.81%. The Nikkei 225 dipped 0.13%.
Australia reported jobs data for November with employment change figures showing a massive jump of 39,100 jobs, handily beating an expected 20,000 gain under a participation rate of 64.6%, higher than the 64.5% seen, and an unemployment rate ticking up to 5.7% from 5.6%.
Plans by President-elect Donald Trump to cut taxes and ramp up spending on infrastructure played a central focus among investors after the rate hike with Fed Chair Janet Yellen not giving much away.
Yellen in a press conference emphasized that the changes were only "a very modest adjustment in the path of the Federal Funds Rate" that involved "changes by only some of the participants."
Yellen noted that "some of the participants but not all of the participants did incorporate some assumption of a change in fiscal policy into their projections," and this "may have been a factor that was one of several that occasioned the shifts."
"But I want to emphasize that the shifts that you see here are really very tiny," Yellen said. She added that While the labor market remains solid, the Fed was "not seeing evidence in labor markets of very substantial upward pressures on labor that could signify extreme shortages of labor that could propel inflation higher in a very rapid way, and inflation is still operating below our objective."
Overnight, U.S. stocks were lower after the close on Wednesday, as losses in the Oil & Gas, Utilities and Basic Materials sectors led shares lower.
At the close in NYSE, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.60%, while the S&P 500 index declined 0.81%, and the NASDAQ Composite index fell 0.50%.