China Stocks Lead Losses in Asia as Beijing Stresses Growth Plans
China stocks led losses in Asia on Friday after Beijing affirmed its recent policy shifts and stressed plans to boost growth following a high-profile meeting on Thursday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 1.39%, while mainland China’s CSI 300 was down 0.94%. Most other Asia-Pacific markets also fell, tracking Wall Street declines following a hotter-than-expected producer price inflation reading.
The exception was South Korea’s Kospi, which gained 0.23%, while the small-cap Kosdaq rose 1.01%. Internet firm Kakao gained over 5%, with many of its subsidiaries seeing huge gains. Shares of Samsung Biologics, the fourth-largest company in the Kospi by market cap, rose 3.6%.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 fell 1.16%, while the broad-based Topix saw a smaller loss of 1.12%. Investors also assessed the Bank of Japan’s Tankan survey, which showed a higher-than-expected optimism among large Japanese manufacturers.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.69%. India will also release its wholesale inflation figures for November later in the day, with economists polled by Reuters expecting the rate to come down to 2.2% from October’s 2.36%.
Overnight in the US, all three major indexes slid, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average losing 0.53% to mark its sixth straight losing day after a hotter-than-expected inflation reading. The producer price index, which measures wholesale inflation, climbed 0.4% for November, higher than the Dow Jones estimate of 0.2%.
