Chinese stock market closed a bearish trading day

The Hang Seng, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange benchmark index, closed today with losses of 1.76%. The stock market replicated the downward trend of the leading Asian markets due to investors’ fears for the pandemic.

Between the sub-indices, only the most local survived. Among them, the services sector gained 0.25%. Meanwhile, while real estate added 0.61%, Finance climbed by 1.67%.  

Commerce and Industry dropped by 2.17%. The worst player was the clothing manufacturer Anta Sports, which plunged 7.67% after its majority shareholder announced the sale of 3.26% of the shares at 7.5%, lower than that of the last session’s closing.

This was a critical session for the digital giants as well. Meituan led the losses with a drop of 3.88%. Alibaba followed it with a 2.8% decline and Tencent, which yielded 2.17%.

The Financial sector ended red as well. The insurer AIA saw the worst decrease of 2.19%, and the bank HSBC dropped by 1.95%.

If not for the advance of Hang Lung Properties, the critical situation would also have been replicated in real estate. 

Among Chinese state securities, there is a significant difference between the session of operators. China Unicom climbed by 0.22%, and oil company Sinopec contracted by 5.88%.

The business volume of the session was 154,350 million Hong Kong dollars (19,882 million dollars).

Japan and India suffering from another wave of Covid-19

Japan to India seemed poised to benefit from an acceleration in the global recovery. However, a surge in coronavirus cases in these countries hit Asian markets. The currencies of nations affected by the virus have underperformed those in which vaccines are making progress.

According to Paul Sandhu, director of multi-asset quantitative solutions at BNP Paribas, markets that have become too comfortable with reopening trade and loosening social restrictions may be at risk of Covid spikes. Contrarily, markets with high vaccination rates somewhat sidestep this downside risk.