Asian shares pointed south as investors remain cowed on trade fears

• Monday’s early session sees a full-scale retreat from major bourses as investors continue to fear a progressing trade war.
• Chinese trade data over the weekend highlighted the sticky situation that the US is finding itself in, at the expense of growth for the majority of her own trading partners across the Pacific sector.

Pacific-Asia stock markets remain off-balance, largely printing red across the board as Asian investors remain trepidatious as the US and China continue heading towards each other on a collision course on tariffs and an all-out trade war.

China’s economy contracted further over the weekend, with key data signaling off-kilter Trade Balance figures owing largely to several rounds of tit-for-tat tariffs between the US and China. China’s Imports collapsed by nearly 25% according to the weekend’s figures, and US President Donald Trump’s trade war with China is having the opposite effect that the American president desired; instead of ‘rebalancing’ China’s trade surplus with the US, American buying now accounts for 36.7% of China’s export market, and China’s trade surplus with the US continues to widen towards ten-year highs as US tariffs on Chinese goods continue to punish US consumers instead of their Chinese suppliers.

The Canadian arrest of Huawei’s global CFO in recent weeks is also sparking fresh ire from Chinese officials, with the Canadian judiciary set to have  Meng Wanzhou, daughter of Huawei’s founder, extradited to the US to face charges of circumventing US trade sanctions against Iran.

Japan’s indexes are among the worst-hit for Monday, with the Nikkei 225 dow -2.2% and Tokyo’s Topix index declining -1.9%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index retreats -1.55% and Shanghai’s CSI 300 falls back -2.25%; Australia’s ASX 200 seems to be taking the worst of China’s trade data miss over the weekend, sliding nearly -2.3%, while emerging markets are surprisingly spry, with the MSCI broad Asia-Pacific index up on the day a soft 0.20%.

Nikkei 225 Technical Levels