SYDNEY, NSW, Australia sharemarkets in Asia were mixed on Monday. China's Shenzen went into lock down recently after a major spike in Covid 19 cases.
The ANZ Research's Raymond Yeung and Zhaopeng Xing wrote in a Monday note that China is experiencing the largest wave of COVID since the end of the national lockdown in March 2020.
China's economic growth will be affected if the lockdown is extended. The ANZ analysts said it was 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.
The Shanghai Composite fell 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 population is projected to be 19,499. Tech stocks were hardest hit with the Hang Seng tech index shedding more than 11 percent. Alibaba fell 11.12 percent. Meituan was down 16 percent, while TenCent fell 9.41 percent.
The All Ordinaries in Australia 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 was at 2,645. The key Japanese index, the Nikkei 225, added 145.07 points or 0.58 percent to 25,307. In Seoul, South Korea, the Kospi Composite fell 15.63 points or 0.59 percent to 2,645. Rodrigo Catril, a senior FX strategist at NAB, said that the yen has not been able to display its typical safe-haven attributes, due to the big 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, adding to concerns over a terms-of-trade shock from higher energy prices. In early European trading Monday, the Japanese yen was trading at 117.76, off an earlier low of 117.87. The Swiss franc was 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.