Stocks in Asia Pacific were mixed in Friday afternoon trade following Thursday’s drop that saw shares in China plunging more than 4%.
Mainland Chinese stocks shed earlier gains and were in negative territory by the afternoon as they struggled to recover from their Thursday drop. The Shanghai composite slipped 0.51% while the Shenzhen component shed 0.251%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 0.61%.
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 dipped 0.32% in afternoon trade while the Topix index shed 0.34%. South Korea’s Kospi advanced 0.66%.
Over in Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.11%.
Overall, the MSCI Asia ex-Japan index advanced 0.5%.
The overall tone was expected to be “cautious” following yesterday’s sharp fall in Chinese stocks along with a “miss” in U.S. jobless claims, Tapas Strickland, director of economics at National Bank of Australia, wrote in a morning note.
The initial jobless claims figure stateside came in at 1.3 million for the week ending July 11, the Labor Department said Thursday. That compared against expectations of 1.25 million by economists polled by Dow Jones.
Tensions between Washington and Beijing may also have weighed on investor sentiment. Reuters reported Thursday, citing a source, that U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is considering banning travel stateside by all members of the Chinese Communist Party and their families.
Meanwhile, Singapore’s trade data released Friday showed a surge in non-oil domestic exports (NODX) for June. NODX for June soared 16.1% as compared to a year ago, beating expectations of a 6.2% increase by economists in a Reuters poll. The data release came after the country’s latest gross domestic product numbers, released earlier this week, came in worse than analysts’ forecast and showed the nation’s economy entering a technical recession.
Overnight stateside, the Dow Jones Industrial Average snapped a four-day winning streak as it fell 135.39 points to close at 26,734.71. The S&P 500 slid 0.3% to end its trading day at 3,215.57 while the Nasdaq Composite pulled back 0.7% to close at 10,473.83.
Currencies and oil
The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was at 96.247 following its decline from levels above 96.4 seen earlier in the trading week.
The Japanese yen traded at 107.19 per dollar, in a turbulent trading week that has seen the currency going from levels around 107.4 to below 106.8 against the greenback. The Australian dollar changed hands at $0.6985 after seeing levels around $0.7 yesterday.
Oil prices were lower in the afternoon of Asian trading hours, with international benchmark Brent crude futures down 0.25% to $43.26 per barrel. U.S. crude futures also dipped 0.1% to $40.71 per barrel.
Source: CNBC