Asian stocks: Sluggish amid trade war fears, Thanksgiving Day

While harsh statements from Chinese and Hong Kong diplomats to the US should have ideally dragged the Asian shares to south, losses are limited ahead of the European session on Thursday. The reasons are many including Thanksgiving Day in the US, absence of major data and the previous positive catalysts.

The United States (US) turned a Bill into the Act that now gives the State Department the power to reviews Hong Kong’s special trade status and could lead to harsh sanctions on Human Rights violators.

As expected, policymakers and media from China flashed red signals to the US while the Hong Kong government also reiterated that the Bill (now Act) is unnecessary and unwarranted.

On the contrary, the US data turned down pessimism surrounding the world’s largest economy and favored Wall Street the previous day. Also supporting the lack of action is the absence of major data and market players.

With this, the MSCI’s index of Asia-Pacific shares marks nearly 0.20% as a loss while Japan’s NIKKEI also follows the suit with almost the same figures in red. Further, mixed data from Australia and New Zealand couldn’t deny calls of further rate cuts from their respective central banks while markets in India seem to cheer government measures and the recent pullback in the oil prices.

Traders are less likely to get excited by today’s economic calendar as Swiss Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and German inflation data are the only major data standing there. Though, comments from the European Central Bank (ECB) policymakers could still be followed for intermediate moves.