- Shares in Asia-Pacific fail to ignore risks of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak 2.0.
- Being recalled partial shutdowns, cases surge in the US and Tokyo.
- China’s May month data dump flashed softer than expected results.
- Indonesia’s exports plummet, South Korea trade surplus widens.
Markets in Asia kick-start the key week on a negative side as the latest jump in the pandemic numbers from the US, Tokyo and Beijing favored the risk-off sentiment. Also contributing to the pessimism could be downbeat data dump from China as well as the US protests.
The latest Reuters tally suggested that Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, North Carolina, Oklahoma and South Carolina all had record numbers of new cases in the past three days. On the other hand, Tokyo marked the highest cases since May 05 to 47 whereas authorities in Southern Fengtai district of China called for lockdown amid the outbreak of the virus from surrounding a major wholesale food market.
It should also be noted that the US President Donald Trump seems to lose his favorite spot to the opposition Presidential candidate Joe Biden following the outbreak of protests against the alleged killing of a non-white resident. Not only the citizens by Governors, like New York’s Andrew Cuomo, also criticized the Republican leaders’ lack of support to the issue.
Elsewhere, China’s May month Industrial Production and Retail Sales lagged upbeat market forecasts. However, the figures remained positive as compared to the previous readouts.
Against this backdrop, MSCI’s index of Asia-Pacific shares, ex-Japan, drops near 0.70% while Japan’s NIKKEI 225 drops over 2.5% to 21,684 by the press time. Further, Australia’s ASX 200 had an additional negative factor, in terms of Chinese statistics, to drop over 1.5% to 5,750 as we write. Also fitting in the line could be India’s BSE SENSEX and stocks from Beijing that are printing losses of respectively 1.65% and 0.65% by the press time. Even so, New Zealand’s NZX 50 remain mildly offered amid further easing of lockdown restrictions.
It’s worth mentioning that shares in Hong Kong and South Korea are down 1.75% and 1.85% respectively but those from Indonesia refrain to decline much amid hopes of economic recovery. Further, the US 10-year Treasury yields and the stock futures are also portraying the bears’ show amid broad risk-off sentiment.
Moving on, the economic calendar has a few key data left for publishing. However, the EU-UK Brexit talks and the virus updates will be important to forecast near-term market moves.
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