On Wednesday, Asia-Pacific markets were mixed in trading, with China’s Shenzhen index leading losses after a negative lead from US markets overnight, and with investors digesting Chinese factory activity data.
Asia stocks mixed
There was a 1.295% drop in the Shenzhen Component in China to 11,815.79 and a fall of 0.78% was recorded in the Shanghai Composite, which brought it down to 3,202.14.
The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong was able to trim some of its earlier losses to rise by 0.11% for the day in the final hour of trading, while a 0.84% gain was recorded in the Hang Seng Tech index.
There was a 0.37% dip in the Japanese Nikkei 225 index to 28,091.53 and a 0.27% fall in the Topixindex brought it down to 1,963.16.
A 0.16% drop in the Australian S&P/ASX 200 index brought it down to 6,986.80. The South Korean Kospi index was trading higher by 0.86% to reach 2,472.05.
As for the Kosdaq index, it recorded gains of about 1.26% to reach 807.04. There was also a rise of 0.28% in the MSCI’s index of Asia-Pacific shares not including Japan.
US markets
Overnight trading on Wall Street saw all three of the major US stock indexes recorded declines for the third consecutive session.
There was a 1.1% drop in the S&P 500 to reach 3,986.16, which brought it below the 4,000 mark that it hadn’t reached since July.
There was also a 1.1% drop in the Nasdaq Composite, which closed the day at 11,883.14, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed almost 1%, or 308.12 points to reach 31,790.87.
Market analysts said that equity markets were suffering because of the expectations that central banks are not going to stop their aggressive hiking in the interest rates anytime soon.
Stateside on Tuesday, John Williams, the President of the New York Fed, said that rates would rise further and would stay there until they manage to subdue inflation.
China’s factory activity
According to official data, there was a decline in China’s factory activity, as the Purchasing Managers’ Index for manufacturing was around 49.4.
This makes it the second monthly contraction in a row, but it was still higher than the 49.2 that had been predicted by analysts. In July, the PMI had stood at 49.
PMI readings represent a contraction or expansion month-by-month and are sequential. Contraction and expansion are distinguished through the 50 point mark.
As far as the non-manufacturing PMI is concerned, it stood at 52.6 for the month of August, while it had been 53.8 in the month earlier.
Japan’s factory output rises
There was an unexpected growth in Japan’s industrial production by almost 1% in July as compared to June.
The latest numbers beat the expectations of a 0.5% contraction, after factory output jumped by 9.2% in June as COVID-19 curbs in China were lifted.
There was also a 2.4% increase in retail sales in July, as compared to the same time a year earlier. There was a slight strengthening in the Japanese yen, which was trading at 138.63 against the US dollar.
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