Asian shares mixed following Wall St retreat

TOKYO (AP) — Major Asian share indexes meandered between modest gains and losses Tuesday after a retreat on Wall Street.

Australia’s benchmark led the declines, falling more than 1% Tuesday ahead of a Reserve Bank of Australia decision that is expected to keep interest rates unchanged.

Newly released manufacturing data from Japan showed factory activity slightly improved, though still in contraction.

The Japanese government reported that the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for July stood at 2.9%, little changed from recent months.

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index was flat at 23,138.91 and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong edged 0.2% higher, to 25,171.86. South Korea's Kospi gained 1.2%, to 2,352.99. The Shanghai Composite index inched 0.1% higher, to 3,398.92.

The S&P/ASX 200 dropped 1.6% to 5,966.00 ahead of the RBA's policy announcement.

Leaders of Japan's governing Liberal Democratic Party were negotiating over who will replace Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after he steps down. The expectation is that his successor will continue the “Abenomics” policies he launched in early 2013, aimed at spurring growth through massive central bank stimulus and cheap credit.

While those policies have not yielded the stronger, sustained growth Abe promised for the world's third largest economy, until late last year Japan had mostly maintained what officials called a “modest recovery."

In late 2019, after a sales tax hike and shocks to export demand from the trade war between the U.S. and China, the economy slipped into recession. This year it has been battered by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and shutdowns to control it.

Overnight, Wall Street ended August with its fifth monthly gain in a row.

The benchmark S&P 500 fell 0.2% to 3,500.31. It finished the month with a...