by Saikat Chatterjee
Reuters.com
HONG KONG, March 15 Asian stocks fell on Tuesday after the Bank of Japan painted a gloomier view of the world’s third-largest economy, but the yen firmed as policymakers appeared to back away from any imminent move to cut interest rates further into negative territory.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan extended early losses and were down 1 percent by mid-afternoon, near the day’s lows. Japanese stocks ended down 0.7 percent.
European markets looked set to follow Asia lower, with financial spreadbetters predicting Britain’s FTSE 100 to slip as much as 0.4 percent, Germany’s DAX to fall as much as 0.3 percent, and France’s CAC 40 to ease 0.2 percent.