singapore shares in asiapacific looked set for a lower thursday start following overnight losses on wall street after the release of the us federal reserves july meeting minutes futures pointed to a lower open for japanese stocks the nikkei futures contract was at 27405 while its counterpart in osaka was at 27400 that compared against the nikkei 225s last close at 2758591 australian stocks also looked set to slip with the spi futures contract at 73780 against the spasx 200s last close at 750210 australias jobs data for july is set to be released at 930 am on thursday overnight on wall street the dow jones industrial average dropped 38259 points to 3496069 while the sp 500 shed 107 to 440027 the nasdaq composite slid 089 to 1452591 those losses came as minutes from the federal reserves july gathering showed officials made plans to pull back the pace of their monthly bond purchases likely before the end of the year looking ahead most participants noted that provided that the economy were to evolve broadly as they anticipated they judged that it could be appropriate to start reducing the pace of asset purchases this year the minutes stated the us dollar index which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers was at 93136 after a recent spike from below 928 the japanese yen traded at 10979 per dollar still weaker than levels below 1095 seen against the greenback earlier this week the australian dollar changed hands at 07237 having dropped from above 073 earlier in the week