Hong Kong tech shares drop, Asia markets

SINGAPORE — Hong Kong’s Grasp Seng index fell greater than 2% on Friday as tech shares got here underneath strain.

The benchmark index slipped 2.64% within the closing hour of commerce, whereas the Grasp Seng Tech index dropped 5.41%.

Grasp Seng heavyweights Alibaba and Meituan dropped 7.01% and seven.18% respectively. Alibaba is on observe for a 3rd straight session of losses following information earlier this week that several Ant Group executives have stepped down as Alibaba partners.

Meituan shares plunged after the corporate was summoned by Hangzhou’s market regulator over meals security and worth competitors.

Shares of Standard Chartered initially popped extra 2% after the bank reported a 19% jump in profits for the primary half of the yr and introduced a $500 million share buyback. The inventory later pared positive aspects, however was nonetheless up 0.72% in afternoon commerce.

Actual property shares in Hong Kong fell Friday.

Chinese language leaders on Thursday signaled Beijing is unlikely to try to boost the economy, and downplayed the nation’s GDP goal of “round 5.5%.”

“This hints that the federal government just isn’t going to overly spend on infrastructure tasks to attain that goal. Our view is that this isn’t such a foul factor,” ING mentioned in a Friday observe.

“This is able to give extra room for the central authorities to unravel the issue of uncompleted development tasks,” the authors added.

In mainland China, the Shanghai Composite was 0.89% decrease at 3,253.24 and the Shenzhen Component dropped 1.3% to 12,266.92.

Moreover, Beijing appears dedicated to its zero-Covid coverage.

“It seems to us that any change within the zero-Covid coverage will solely occur when authorities are satisfied that mutations are much less virulent and vaccines/medicines are confirmed to be more practical,” wrote ANZ Analysis’s Betty Wang, a senior China economist, and Zhaopeng Xing, a senior China strategist.

The Japanese yen strengthened sharply in opposition to the dollar on Friday, after weakening for months as central financial institution coverage in Japan diverged from the Fed’s.

“What we have seen definitely over the second half of this week is a giant rally in U.S. charges markets,” mentioned Andrew Ticehurst, a price strategist at Nomura Australia.

“These rate of interest differentials in opposition to Japan are narrowing and that is inflicting dollar-yen to come back off,” he mentioned. Treasury yields fell after the detrimental U.S. GDP print.

The yen final traded fingers at 132.81 per greenback.

The chance-sensitive Australian dollar additionally strengthened, and final stood at $0.7022.

“The development in world threat sentiment over the previous 48 hours, and the slight weakening we have seen within the U.S. greenback have each been constructive elements for Aussie,” Ticehurst mentioned.

The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the dollar in opposition to a basket of its friends, was at 105.625.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 struggled for path and closed fractionally decrease at 27,801.64 whereas the Topix index dipped 0.44% to 1,940.31.

The nation’s industrial output jumped 8.9% in June from the earlier month, the ministry of financial system, commerce and business mentioned Friday. The print shocked to the upside after falling in Might.

Elsewhere, South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.67% to 2,451.5 and the Kosdaq superior 0.66% to 803.62.

The S&P/ASX 200 in Australia was up 0.81% to shut at 6,945.2.

Thailand’s market is closed for a vacation Friday.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outdoors of Japan misplaced 0.4%.

Main U.S. indexes rallied at the least 1% every in a single day.

The Dow Jones Industrial Common jumped 332.04 factors, or 1%, to 32,529.63. The S&P 500 rose 1.2% to 4,072.43, and the Nasdaq Composite added practically 1.1% to 12,162.59.

U.S. futures rose additional after tech firms like Apple and Amazon reported robust earnings.

These strikes got here regardless of the U.S. Bureau of Financial Evaluation reporting GDP fell 0.9% at an annualized pace for the April-to-June quarter, based on the advance estimate. GDP slipped 1.6% within the first quarter of the yr.

Whereas that’s the second-straight detrimental GDP report, official declarations on whether or not the U.S. is in a recession come from the Nationwide Bureau of Financial Analysis. That determination could take months and even longer.

U.S. crude was up 1.18% at $97.56 per barrel, whereas Brent crude was 0.78% larger at $107.98 per barrel.

— CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.