Asia-Pacific markets mostly fell on Friday as investors awaited U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s comments at Jackson Hole gathering of global central bankers.

In the past, Powell has outlined broad policy initiatives and provided clues about the U.S. policy path at Jackson Hole.

In Asia, data from Japan showed the country’s headline inflation at 2.8% in July, unchanged from the previous month.

Core inflation, which strips out prices of fresh food, stood at 2.7%, in line with expectations from economists polled by Reuters and higher than June’s figure of 2.6%.

However, the so called “core-core” inflation rate, which strips out prices of both fresh food and energy and is tracked by the Bank of Japan, fell to 1.9% in July from 2.2% in June.

This is the lowest the “core-core” inflation rate has reached since September 2022.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 reversed gains to drop 0.11%, while the Topix rose marginally.

Bank of Japan’s Governor Kazuo Ueda told the country’s parliament on Friday that the central bank will “remain highly vigilant” to market moves, adding that the markets remained unstable, Reuters reported.

South Korea’s Kospi was down 0.51%, and the small-cap Kosdaq fell 0.58%.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.43%.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was down 0.73%, while mainland China’s CSI 300 extended losses to a fourth straight day, dipping marginally.

Early Friday, Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group said in a statement that it would convert its secondary listing in Hong Kong to a primary listing, making the company dual listed on both in Hong Kong and in New York.

“Our voluntary conversion to dual primary listing does not involve any issue of new shares and/or fund-raising,” it added.

Overnight in the U.S., the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite saw the largest loss among all three major indexes, shedding 1.67% as technology stocks felt the brunt of Thursday’s declines.

The broad S&P 500 slipped 0.89%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended down 0.43%.

—CNBC’s Alex Harring and Pia Singh contributed to this report.