Asian stocks pay a little heed to the fight against coronavirus amid increased fears

With rising fatalities and fears of extended lockdowns, Asian shares remain under pressure ahead of the European session on Monday. While portraying the risk-off, MSCI’s index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan drops more than 1.0% whereas Japan’s NIKKEI extend declines by 2.03% to 18,980 at the time of writing.

US President Donald Trump, in his Coronavirus Task Force Briefings, refrained from his earlier signals to re-open the economy by Easter. Rather, the Republican leader extended social-distancing until April 30. Further, calls by some of the Task Force members that the virus numbers could rise heavily also weighed on the market’s risk-tone during early Asia.

Following that, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) cut seven-day Repo Rate by 20 basis points (bps) to 2.2% but failed to push the Chinese equities, currently down near 1.0%. Moving on, central banks from Australia and New Zealand offered clues of further easing and managed to propel the respective equity indices. In doing so, Australia’s ASX 200 cross 7.0% mark to 5,181 while New Zealand’s NZX 50 also rises 1.70% by the press time.

Additionally, the government from India and Indonesia continues to struggle with the later ones inching closer to the lockdown in capital Jakarta whereas the former marks fifth day of quarantine. That said, India’s BSE SENSEX drops 2.25% to 29,144 but the losses are high to the tune of more than 4.0%, to 4,358, by the time of writing.

It’s worth mentioning that the US stock futures continue to extend Friday’s losses and the 10-year treasury yield also remains below 0.70%, which in turn portrays a broad risk-off sentiment.

Amid a lack of major data and increased concentration over the coronavirus (COVID-19) issue, markets are less likely to look for any other catalysts than the pandemic headlines.