2013.04.0101:57:11UTC+00Asian stocks slump on Japan data as Commodities fall with Won

Asian shares downgrade and commodities fall off for a second day after a survey of sentiment among the Japan’s biggest manufacturers missed calculations. South Korea’s won and the euro sluggish. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index missed 0.8 percent as of 11:51 a.m. in Tokyo. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPXL1) futures back slides 0.1 percent after the meter hits a record last week. The S&P GSCI Index of 24 commodities drop 0.5 percent. Corn sank 4.1 percent to the bottom since July after the U.S. government announced inventories were better than calculations. The won diminish 0.4 percent versus the dollar. The euro slumped versus most peers. Markets in New Zealand, Australia and Hong Kong are closed.

The Bank of Japan (8301)’s Tankan index of confidence among huge manufacturers lagged economist calculations while data today exhibits South Korean exports advances less than assumed. A manufacturing gauge in China bolster at a faster pace even as data trailed forecasts and a report tomorrow may display unemployment in the euro area jumped to a record in February.

“We need to see the economy showing signs of improvement and inflation numbers picking up in Japan,” Vasu Menon, head of content and research at OCBC Bank Ltd. in Singapore, said on Bloomberg Television’s On the Move with Rishaad Salamat. “China is recovering but the recovery is going to be a modest one.”

About three stocks decline for every one that advances on the MSCI Asian gauge, which has rallied in the past five months on signs the U.S. economy is reestablishing. Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average gave up 0.9 percent and the broader Topix Index relinquished 1.7 percent. The quarterly Tankan increase to minus 8 in March from minus 12 in December, the Bank of Japan announced today. The median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg was minus 7.

S&P Record

The S&P 500 Index advanced to a record on March 28 as data boosted confidence in the world’s biggest economy. U.S. markets were closed on March 29. The Institute for Supply Management factory index will come in at 54 for March, moved a notch from February’s 54.2, which was the highest since June 2011, economists calculated before data today.

In China, the Shanghai Composite Index and the CSI 300 Index swung between losses and gains. The official Purchasing Managers’ Index was at an 11-month high of 50.9 in March, data exhibits today. That compares with 50.1 in February and the 51.2 median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey. Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Co., the country’s largest producer of rare earth, declined 2.3 percent after earnings dropped 57 percent last year.