Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index slid 0.38% and the CSI300 Index dropped 0.37%
Asian stocks came under pressure on Monday as persistent worries about inflation and rising interest rates dogged the global economic outlook and fresh selling in technology stocks weighed on Chinese markets.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was flat, after U.S. stocks ended the previous session with negligible gains for the day. The index is down 3.6% so far this month.
A negative tone was evident as Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index slid 0.38% and the mainland’s CSI300 Index dropped 0.37%, led by a 1.5% decline in technology firms.
Australian shares gained 0.42% while Japan’s Nikkei stock index was 0.8% higher.
The yield on benchmark 10-year Treasury notes rose to 2.7883% from its U.S. close of 2.787% on Friday.
The two-year yield, which rises with traders’ expectations of higher Fed fund rates, touched 2.5869%, up from 2.583%.
Uncertainty in market sentiment this week follows the S&P 500’s meagre gains on Friday of just 0.01%.
The Nasdaq declined 0.30% while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.03%.
Despite the marginal gains, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq recorded their seventh straight weeks of losses, the longest losing streak since the end of the dotcom bubble in 2001.
The Dow suffered its eighth consecutive weekly decline, its longest since 1932 during the Great Depression.
In Australia, the Labor Party ended a near 10 year rule of conservative government at a general election on the weekend. While Labor has promised climate, housing and enhanced social welfare reforms analysts do not believe the change in government will create major implications for the nation’s economy.
In our view there was little proposed by the incoming government during the election campaign that at this stage requires us to revisit our economic forecasts, CBA economists wrote on Monday.
Put another way, our economic forecasts and call on the RBA are unchanged despite the change of national leadership, they wrote.
