Major Asian markets were a mixed picture on Friday, following losses seen on Wall Street amid investor concerns about the trade dispute between the U.S. and China.
Japan led losses in Asia: The benchmark Nikkei 225 slid 1.01 percent, with losses seen across most sectors. Automaker stocks were down 1.86 percent and among the worst-performing sectors in the afternoon.
Early declines in South Korea reversed, with the Kospi climbing 0.31 percent by the afternoon.
Over in Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 edged lower by 0.17 percent amid choppy trade. Heavily weighted financials rose, but those gains were offset by declines in most other sectors. Telecommunications stocks fell the most as Telstra extended losses seen in the last session.
Greater China markets were mixed in the afternoon. On the mainland, the Shanghai composite pulled back by 0.35 percent. The smaller Shenzhen composite rose 0.99 percent, paring some of Thursday’s more than 2 percent drop.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index, meanwhile, edged lower by 0.27 percent, with the energy sector leading losses in the afternoon.
MSCI’s broad index of shares in Asia Pacific excluding Japan was mostly unchanged, last trading higher by 0.04 percent.
That came after stocks stateside closed lower in the last session, with trade tensions between Washington and Beijing continuing to weigh on investor sentiment. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 0.8 percent, or 196.10 points, to close at 24,461.70 and mark the index’s eighth straight day of losses.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday requested $200 billion in Chinese products be identified and potentially subject to an additional 10 percent tariff. China said it would retaliate with countermeasures if the U.S. went ahead with its threats.
Apart from trade, the backdrop of a deterioration in forward-looking indicators of global growth and a stronger dollar has resulted in a more cautious outlook for equity markets in the region.
Morgan Stanley, for one, has downgraded its targets for a number of Asian stock indexes. Jonathan Garner, chief Asia and emerging market equity strategist at Morgan Stanley, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that Hong Kong was the market he was most concerned about in terms of near-term price direction.
Garner said he had a 12-month target of 27,200 for the Hang Seng from a previous target of 30,350.
Ahead, all eyes will be on OPEC and its allies as they meet in Vienna later on Friday. Markets are expecting the oil producers to ease production cuts that have been in place since 2017, with Reuters reporting early on Friday that Saudi Arabia’s energy minister said the consensus was for output to be increased by one million barrels per day.
Still, other exporters, such as Iran, are understood to be against the slashing of output curbs.
“Saudi Arabia has pretty much laid down the gauntlet: An output increase is needed for the benefit of the consumers … But likely these key players are staking out their positions as they go into a meeting and my bet is there will be a compromise scenario of raising output by probably in the range between 500,000 and 700,000 per day,” Victor Shum, vice president for energy at IHS Markit, told CNBC’s “Street Signs.”
Before the highly watched meeting, Brent crude futures rose 1.15 percent to trade at $73.89 per barrel and U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures gained 1.22 percent to trade at $66.3.
Also of note, the Bank of England on Thursday held rates steady, but the central bank was seen as a touch more hawkish after one more committee member, BOE Chief Economist Andy Haldane, voted for a rate hike.
The British pound on Friday extended its overnight gains, last trading at $1.3260 at 12:45 p.m. HK/SIN after touching a recent seven-month low.
The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of currencies, was steady at 94.823. Against the yen, the dollar traded at 109.99.
In corporate news, Samsung Securities fell 3.78 percent after South Korea’s financial regulator proposed late on Thursday that some of company’s operations be suspended for six months following a “fat finger” error that took place earlier this year.
