Stocks in Asia were mixed in Friday morning trade, as data showed Singapore’s economy shrinking much more than expected in the second quarter.
Mainland Chinese stocks were lower in early trade, with the Shanghai composite down 0.2% and the Shenzhen composite 0.382% lower. The Shenzhen component also slipped fractionally, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was slightly lower.
Elsewhere, the Nikkei 225 in Japan traded down by 0.1%, while the Topix index fell 0.22%. Over in South Korea, however, the Kospi advanced 0.23%.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 declined 0.25% as the sectors mostly slipped. Overall, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan shed 0.09%.
Investors will be next looking out for the release of Chinese trade data for June to assess the impact of Beijing’s ongoing trade war with Washington.
Singapore is ‘flirting with recession now’
Gross domestic product in Singapore fell 3.4% in the April-June period as compared to the previous quarter on an annualized and seasonally adjusted basis, according to preliminary data released Friday. That widely missed expectations of a 0.1% quarter-on-quarter increase from a Reuters poll.
Compared with a year earlier, GDP grew 0.1% in the second quarter — the slowest year-on-year growth since the second quarter of 2009 — also less than the forecast of a 1.1% expansion in a Reuters poll.
Despite the poorer-than-expected data print, Singapore’s markets recovered from their earlier slip, with the Straits Times Index trading 0.23% higher in the morning.
“This is pretty bad,” Sian Fenner, lead Asia economist at Oxford Economics, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday. “We were looking for a negative contraction (quarter-on-quarter) just given the fact that we have seen the manufacturing numbers being so weak, we have seen the export figures contract as well, but this was a big miss.”
“Singapore is …really flirting with recession now,” Fenner said.
Record close for Dow
Overnight on Wall Street, the 30-stock Dow crossed the 27,000 for the first time in history, adding 227.88 points to close at 27,088.08. The S&P 500 also posted a record close, rising 0.2% to 2,999.91. The Nasdaq Composite, on the other hand, slipped 0.1% to finish its trading day stateside at 8,196.04.
The moves came amid rising expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve would cut interest rates at its upcoming monetary policy meeting in July. Market expectations for a rate cut later this month are at 100%, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool.
Currencies and oil
The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was at 96.999 after bouncing from levels below 96.9 yesterday.
The Japanese yen traded at 108.37 against the dollar after weakening from levels below 108.0 in the previous session, while the Australian dollar changed hands at $0.6985 after trading below $0.695 earlier in the week.
Oil prices rose in the morning of Asian trading hours, with the international benchmark Brent crude futures contract adding 0.54% to $66.88 per barrel and U.S. crude futures rising 0.55% to $60.53 per barrel.
