By Alun John

HONG KONG (Reuters] – On Wednesday the dollar rose against the yen to a record four-and-a half-year high after better-than-expected U.S. retail sales data. Asian shares were not affected by this, but Wall Street equities did improve.

MSCI’s Asia-Pacific broadest index, which excludes Japan, fell 0.45%. This was just 0.45% off the close-to-three-week-high closing high. Most markets saw declines, and MSCI lost 0.4%.

Early Asian hour, the dollar hit a record high of 114.97Yen. This is its strongest performance since March 2017 and it was up 16.3 months after it fell to $1.1320.

The Tuesday data showing that U.S. retail sales increased faster than expected in October could help the greenback. This may encourage the U.S. Federal Reserve (US Federal Reserve) to speed up the withdrawal of its asset purchasing programme as inflation continues to be stubbornly high.

Rob Carnell of ING’s Asia Pacific research, stated that “the data supports that feeling that things are going fairly well” and that the Fed could be a bit more aggressive if necessary without causing the party crash.

According to him, inflation remains top of mind.

Britain will publish its October CPI inflation data late today. This high-quality print could increase the pressure on Bank of England to raise interest rates in December, after shock markets last month when it held fire.

Carnell said, “What it is not about is Biden-Xi summit which had potential to cause damage but has not done so.”

Tuesday’s three-hour meeting between Joe Biden, U.S. president, and Xi Jinping, Chinese leader, cooled some tensions in Sino-U.S. conflict, but both sides remained committed to their longstanding positions on a number of issues.

Although the positive tone provided a small boost for Asian shares Tuesday, it was short-lived.

The benchmark Hong Kong index fell 0.4% on Wednesday. This was due to property developers and casino traders betting that the recent recovery in these sectors would be too much. The Chinese blue chip index was flat.

Australian shares lost 0.5% due to Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s (OTC:) weight. The largest Australian bank, its shares plummeted 6% as it suffered from margin pressures from low interest rates and rising mortgage competition.

Wall Street overnight saw the rise of the 0.15% and the gain of 0.3%, respectively, while the index was up 0.76% due to retail sales.

They also gave a boost U.S. Treasuries. The benchmark 10-year note yields reached 1.646% in Early Asia, an increase of three weeks. [US/]

The barrel price dropped 0.66%, to $80.25 per barrel. The price per barrel fell 0.5% to $82.03. [O/R]

The ounce price rose 0.2% to $1854 per ounce. This is a return towards the 5-month peak of $1,876.9, which was reached a day earlier due to rising inflation worries.

The bitcoin Rival Inflation hedge was stable at $60,240 after losing 5% the day before and briefly falling below $60,000.