Asian Stock Market: Bears cheer return of reflation fears, covid woes

Asian traders take offers, magnifying losses of their global counterparts, while heading into Tuesday’s European session. Uncertainty over the US Federal Reserve’s (Fed) next moves joined upbeat China data to put the region’s technology shares in pessimistic conditions.

Against this backdrop, MSCI’s index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan drops the most in two months, down 1.86% by the press time. Further, Japan’s Nikkei 225 and shares in Taiwan print losses over 3.0% as fears of chip shortage and higher inflation weigh on technology-led economies the most.

Chinese equities couldn’t cheer upbeat inflation figures for April as higher price pressure pushes the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) towards further consolidation of the easy money policies. The same dragged shares in Australia and New Zealand, down 1.05% and 0.62% respectively by the time of writing.

Elsewhere, Indonesia’s IDX Composite also failed to benefit from the upbeat Retail Sales whereas South Korea’s KOSPI couldn’t ignore chip-shortage woes, drops 1.37% to 3,204 amid early Tuesday.

On a broader scale, S&P 500 Futures print second consecutive daily loss and the US 10-year Treasury yields pause a two-day uptrend near the 1.60% level. This helps the US dollar index (DXY) to extend the previous day’s recovery moves.

Read: S&P 500 Futures track Wall Street’s losses to revisit mid-4,100s

It should be noted that the pessimism surrounding India’s coronavirus (COVID-19) conditions worsen despite the government’s claims of a reduction in the pace of virus infections. Hence, India’s BSE Sensex drops 0.70% by press time.

Other than the stock-specific headlines, China’s move to curb iron ore prices and the US policymakers’ rejection of the oil supply shortage, due to the Colonial Pipeline pause, are extra catalysts favoring the market bears.

Moving on, Wednesday’s US Consumer Price Index (CPI) for April will be the key for global markets as any strong pick-up in the headline inflation data, which is more likely, could push the Fed towards tapering.