First Place Finance - Asian Market Review

Following a volatile week caused by trade and currency tensions Asian markets have opened cautious higher on Monday for the most part. Investors remain somewhat upbeat, despite a weekend investors note from investment bank Goldman Sachs, in which they said the trade war is likely to stretch at least until the 2020 U.S. presidential election. They also cut their global growth forecast and said the risk of a recession is rising due to the ongoing trade war.

Early Monday morning mainland China’s Shanghai Composite is trading up by 0.5% and is being matched by a 0.5% gain for the smaller cap Shenzhen Composite. Investors seem to have become accustomed to a weaker Yuan after the People’s Bank of China set the exchange rate for the Yuan below 7 for a third consecutive day.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng is also trading higher, gaining 0.4%. Shares of Tencent trade up by 1.3% and Sunny Optical has a 2.8% gain.

Japan’s Nikkei remains unchanged as Japan celebrates a public holiday.

In Australia the S&P/ASX 200 is flat, with the big four banks gaining 0.2% to 0.7%. Those gains are offset by a 0.9% loss from BHP Group and a 2.6% loss in shares of Rio Tinto.

South Korea’s Kospi is 0.4% higher, with Samsung up by 1.4% and SK Hynix gaining 1.4% as well.

Southeast Asian markets aren’t as strong. Singapore’s Straits Times Index has a 0.5% loss, and the KLCI in Malaysia is lower by less than 0.1%, while the Jakarta Composite in Indonesia is rising 0.6%.