Asian stock market: Chinese bulls confront the rest amid mixed sentiment

• Asian equities trade mixed as hopes of further stimulus join surge in precious metals and the US dollar weakness.
• Australian Retail Sales softened, RBNZ suggested easing of market intervention.
• Japan’s Jibun Bank Manufacturing PMI suggests contraction in activity despite recovery, virus woes continue in Australia and the US.
• US policymakers prepare another trillion-dollar fiscal package to keep the economy afloat.

Asian shares flash mixed signals as markets in Japan and Pacific nations fail to cheer the expectations of extra government funding/helps amid downbeat data and the coronavirus (COVID-19) woes. While portraying the same, the MSCI index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rises 0.23% when Nikkei 225 drops 0.65% to 22,735 before Wednesday’s trading bell rings in Europe. Japan’s Jibun Bank Manufacturing PMI for July improved from 40.1 to 42.6 but remained in the contraction territory for one more time. Recently, Tokyo Governor said measures needed to prevent the virus from spreading to the elderly.

Australia’s ASX 200 slumps 1.50% to 6,064 as the preliminary Retail Sales growth lost the earlier strength of 16.9% while rising 2.4% in June. Following the suit was New Zealand’s NZX 50 that marks 0.40% loss as RBNZ said to limit market intervention citing economic recovery. Moving on, South Korea’s KOSPI and India’s BSE Sensex are on the same boat with losses below 1.0% amid pandemic worries and not so positive fundamentals.

On the contrary, China’s blue chips remain on the front foot and help the dragon nation to cheer the unidentified optimism with over 1.0% profits on average. Further, markets in Indonesia follow their Asian neighbor whereas Hong Kong’s Hang Seng struggles for a clear direction amid a global push against Chinese efforts to seize more power in the city.

It should be noted that the US stock futures enjoy the early-day signal that the US stimulus package will be out by the end of July. The same exerts additional downside pressure on the US dollar just when the virus figures are suggesting further worries for the world’s largest economy. The resultant moves push the global traders towards gold and silver that have lately been on the north-run to multi-year top.

Looking forward, investors will have to keep eyes on the virus, stimulus headlines for fresh impetus as economic calendar offers fewer interesting data/events.