SYDNEY, NSW, Australia-sharemarkets in Asia were mixed on Monday. China's Shenzen has recently gone into a lock down after a major spike in Covid 19 cases.
According to a Monday note, China is experiencing the largest wave of COVID since the end of the national lockdown in March 2020, according to ANZ Research's Raymond Yeung and Zhaopeng Xing.
China's economic growth will be affected if the lockdown is extended. It is too early to change our GDP growth forecast by 5.0% for 2022, but we are wary of the impact of a partial lockdown in the economically rich provinces, according to ANZ analysts.
The Shanghai Composite fell by 86.21 points or 2.60 percent to close Monday at 3,223. The Hang Seng plunged 1,053 in Hong Kong, but the real damage was done in Hong Kong. 95 points or 5.13 percent of the total was 19,499. Tech stocks were hardest hit with the Hang Seng tech index shedding more than 11 percent. Alibaba plummeted 11.12 percent. Meituan was down 16 percent, while TenCent fell 9.41 percent.
In Australia, the All Ordinaries rose by 69.60 points or 0.95 percent to 7.408. The S&P NZX 50 slid 16.27 points or 0.14 percent, over the Tasman, to 11,805. 59 percent of the population grew to 2,645. The key Japanese index, the Nikkei 225, added 145.07 points or 0.58 percent to 25,307. The Kospi Composite fell 15.63 points or 15.63 points in Seoul, South Korea.
Rodrigo Catril, a senior FX strategist at NAB, told Reuters that the yen has been unable to display its typical safe-haven attributes because of the rise in U.S. yields and the BoJ yield curve control policy that prevents JGBs from moving up in core global yields.
Japan is a big energy importer and adds to concerns over a terms-of-trade shock due to higher energy prices. The Japanese yen was trading at 117.76 in early European trading Monday, off an earlier low of 117.87. The Swiss franc has softened to 0.9359.
The Canadian dollar was down to 0.9359. The high-flying Australian dollar was seen to be running out of steam, falling to 0.7241.