Asian stocks falling back as risk appetite sours, Nikkei ticks towards ¥22,000

• Risk appetite is falling back in Pacific Asia, with indexes retreating and erasing recent gains.
• The US-China tariff agreement from the weekend is beginning to look paper-thin, with little to no key details being provided.

Asian equities are falling back once more after seeing early signs of a global risk recovery following last weekend’s G20 Leader’s Summit, which saw a temporary tariff truce agreed to by the US and China, with the two sides vowing to return to the negotiating table.

This week’s early risk run appears to have run out of steam however, with investors seeing more questions being raised than answered following this weekend’s perceived walk-back of US-China tariffs, but equity markets are beginning to sour again in the face of the growing unknown. US President Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping agreed to drag both sides back to the trade talks table anew, and promised to impose a 90-day grace period on Trump’s planned tariff rate hike on China in January, but market participants are having trouble finding consensus on when this 90-day period even starts, with several White House heads delivering conflicting start dates, and little explanation has been delivered as to how the two sides intend to meet in the middle of current trade disputes.

Japan is seeing the worst of the risk-off revulsion, with the Nikkei 225 declining -2.35% alongside Tokyo’s Topix index, which is in the red for -2.35%. Chinese indexes are also retreating, albeit at a more measured level, with Shanghai’s CSI 300 down -0.35% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng declining -0.60%. Australia’s ASX 200 bourse is also down for Tuesday, declining -1.00%, although emerging markets remain on-balance, with the MSCI broad Asia-Pacific index up on the day for an impressive 2.00%.

Nikkei 225 Technical Levels