- Stocks in Asia remain depressed amid fresh risk-off.
- PBOC announced rate cuts, China’s CSI 300 Health Care Index slumped 17% on a glitch.
- US death toll cross 40,000, WTI refreshes multi-year low.
With the surge in the US death toll and President Donald Trump’s tweets, doubting China’s role in the coronavirus (COVID-19) spread, Asian stocks came under pressure while heading into the European session on Monday. In doing so, the equities in Asia paid a little heed to the People’s Bank of China’s (PBOC) rate cut while taking clues from a surprise 17% drop by the CSI 300 Health Care Index.
MSCI’s index of Asia-Pacific shares remains mostly unchanged to 0.05% with Japan’s NIKKEI down more than 1.0% to 19,700 by the press time.
Chinese stocks struggle between gains and losses to justify the PBOC’s rate cut and the latest technical error. On the other hand, Indian equities seem to recover the latest losses following the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) move on Friday as well as the government’s signals to ease the lockdown in the less infected area.
Moving on, benchmarks in Australia and New Zealand mark losses of 1.2% and 0.15% respectively whereas South Korea’s KOSPI and Indonesia’s IDX Composite remains mildly positive while cheering China’s rate cut.
Also portraying the risk-tone were the US 10-year Treasury yields that drop two basis points to 0.638% by the time of writing.
Traders may now await any hints of the second aid package from the Trump administration, as US President Donald Trump signaled to hear on Monday, for fresh direction. Further to note is the fact that the virus updates will not lose their importance in the meantime.
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