Asian stocks fell this week, with the benchmark index capping its first weekly loss in five weeks, after Chinese data fueled concern about an economic slowdown and a rise in the yen sent Japanese shares lower.
Jiangxi Copper Co (江西銅業), which earns 92 percent of its revenue from China, dropped 5.8 percent in Hong Kong after prices for the metal slumped on concern that Chinese demand will weaken, while Toyota Motor Corp, a carmaker that generates 75 percent of its revenue abroad, lost 5.7 percent in Tokyo.
Also dropping this week were Malaysian Airline System Bhd, which fell 4 percent after one of its planes disappeared with 239 people aboard on March 8 and New World Development Co (新世界發展), which lost 17 percent after proposing to privatize its China property unit for HK$18.6 billion (US$2.4 billion).
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index conformed to the downward trend, sliding 3.5 percent to 134.32 this week in its steepest one-week decline in almost two years amid speculation that China would miss its 7.5 percent growth goal.
“The market started to pay more attention to negative data points,” White Funds Management managing director Angus Gluskie said.
China’s leaders are “using fiscal and monetary policy to control areas of growth, but investors are being cautious and I think they are getting nervous about what they say,” Gluskie added.
In Taipei, the TAIEX fell 0.69 percent, or 60.16 points, to close the week on 8,687.63, compared with 8,713.96 on March 7.
On Friday, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) slipped 1.29 percent to NT$115, while Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) lost 0.7 percent to close at NT$85.5
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index of mainland companies listed, also known as the H-share index, dropped 4.2 percent. The gauge is more than 19 percent down from a high on Dec. 2 last year and is nearing a so-called bear market. The Hang Seng Index also declined this week, falling 4.9 percent in the biggest decline since May 2012, while the Shanghai Composite Index lost 2.6 percent.
China’s factory production increased 8.6 percent annually in the January-to-February period, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics said on Thursday, compared with the 9.5 percent median projection of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News, while retail sales rose 11.8 percent, missing expectations for a 13.5 percent gain in the period.
Aggregate financing in China decreased to 938.7 billion yuan (US$153 billion) last month amid a crackdown on shadow lending, a government report this week showed. That compares with January’s record 2.58 trillion.
Chinese exports slid the most since 2009 last month, a separate report showed.
In Japan, the TOPIX slid 5.8 percent, its biggest weekly decline since June last year, while the smaller Nikkei 225 Stock Average lost 6.2 percent. Exporters slid after the yen rose as much as 0.5 percent to 101.36 to the US dollar.
Elsewhere in the region, South Korea’s KOSPI fell 0.3 percent, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index dropped 2.4 percent after data showed companies boosted full-time payrolls last month by the most in more than 22 years and in Singapore, the Straits Times Index declined 2 percent.
In Wellington, the NZX 50 Index slid 0.9 percent this week after the Reserve Bank of New Zealand raised its key interest rate to make New Zealnd the first developed market nation to exit record-low borrowing costs this year.
On Friday, the NZX slid 0.64 percent, or 32.66 points, from Thursday to close on 5,079.32.
The MSCI Asia-Pacific gauge ended the week trading at 12.65 times estimated earnings, compared with multiples of 15.66 for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and 14.04 for the STOXX Europe 600 Index, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
In other markets on Friday:
Mumbai closed 22.55 points up from Thursday to finish the week at 21,797.16 points.
Manila closed 0.60 percent lower, giving up 38.55 points to close on 6,391.24.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts