Asian stocks remain on a back-foot amid mixed trade news/data ahead of US GDP
|- The doubts over trade deals from the global leaders join caution ahead of important data.
- US GDP and trade developments will be the key to observe.
Shares in Asia retreated on Friday amid market caution ahead of the US GDP while negative news from the US-China and the US-Japan trade negotiations join sluggish data to added volume into the weakness.
MSCI’s gauge of Asia-Pacific shares ex-Japan was down 0.2% by the press time whereas Japan’s Nikkei had to bear the burden of weak industrial production growth with more than half a percent loss.
Further, China’s HANG SENG gained nearly 0.1% as Chinese President Xi Jinping refrains from compromising on currency linkages to trade while India’s Sensex also secured +0.2% gains amid on-going general elections at the world’s largest democracy. Moreover, Australia’s ASX200 followed Chinese benchmark while New Zealand’s NZX50 failed to take benefit of upbeat trade balance data.
On the global front, Wall Street also flashed mixed readings as S&P500 remained mostly unchanged at 2,926 whereas DJIA lost around 0.5% by being near to 26,463. Though, Nasdaq managed to stay positive on upbeat reports from Microsoft and Facebook as the index give higher weight to the technology stocks.
Risk tone was also weighing heavy as the US 10-year treasury yield remained soft at 2.53%.
While news of China and Japan’s resistance to accept the US demand of currency linkages to trade negatively affect the global sentiment, the US Q1 2019 GDP is likely another catalyst that questions that market mood ahead of the release.
The headline GDP annualized figure of the US is likely to come in at 2.1% from 2.2% prior.
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