Asian Stock Market: Sluggish amid off in China, Japan
- Asian equities trade mixed as holidays in the key markets trouble traders.
- Aussie shares cheer RBA’s extended easy money policies, New Zealand follows the suit.
- India takes clues from the West but South Korea, Indonesia can’t ignore escalating pandemic woes in the region.
Shares in the Asia-Pacific region struggle for clear direction during early Tuesday as traders from Beijing and Tokyo cheer extended weekends. While portraying the mood, MSCI’s index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan drops 0.10% even as stocks from Australia and New Zealand gain half a percent by the press time.
Be it the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) sustained support for monetary easing and cautious optimism or downbeat Aussie data, stocks from Canberra had everything needed to post an upbeat. However, holidays at the largest customer China and Japan battle virus woes in Asia to limit the upside momentum.
New Zealand’s NZX 50 copies the moves from Australia even as rumors of RBNZ’s absence in the upcoming meet tested the market sentiment. Also on the risk-negative side could be news suggesting that Japan’s largest prefecture (by area) requests the government to take further measures to tame the coronavirus (COVID-19).
Elsewhere, India’s BSE Sensex cheers global help and early signs that the pandemic is fading in some parts of the nation. However, shares from South Korea and Indonesia print mild losses by the press time.
It should be noted that Wall Street closed mixed as selling in technology shares weighed on the Nasdaq while hopes of faster economic recovery, conveyed by the Fed policymakers backed the bulls.
However, the S&P 500 Futures print a three-day losing streak as optimism faded amid a lack of major data/events. Additionally, fears of trade/geopolitical tension between the West and China, as well as Russia, also weigh on the sentiment.
Read: S&P 500 Futures print three-day downtrend amid mixed clues, sluggish day in Asia
Looking forward, US trade figures and factory orders will be the key to follow but more important will be the risk catalysts.