Asia stocks set to mostly fall as Biden drops out of race; inflation and GDP data this week in focus
Asia-Pacific markets are set to fall on Monday in Asia, on the back of news that U.S. President Joe Biden has dropped out of the presidential race, and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as Democratic nominee.
As investors return from the weekend, they are also assessing the impact of the massive global IT outage on Friday. Machines running Microsoft’s Windows operating system crashed Friday due to a glitch in an update issued by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike. Shares of CrowdStrike plunged 11% on Friday.
Microsoft said in a blog post on the weekend it estimated that 8.5 million Windows devices — or less than 1% of all Windows machines — were affected.
This week, investors will be looking out for GDP data from South Korea and the U.S., as well as factory activity data from around the region.
On Monday, focus will be on the People’s Bank of China’s loan prime rate decision, with the one-year and five-year loan prime rate expected to be unchanged at 3.45% and 3.95% respectively, according to economists polled by Reuters.
The one-year LPR acts as the benchmark for most corporate loans, and the five-year LPR serves as a reference rate for mortgages.
Other economic data this week include inflation data from the U.S. on Friday and from Singapore on Tuesday.
South Korea will also announce second-quarter advance GDP numbers on Thursday, while the U.S. will release second quarter GDP advance estimates on Friday.
Futures for Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 stood at 7,876, lower than its last close of 7,971.60 on Friday.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 is also set for a weaker open, with the Nikkei futures contract in Chicago at 39,845 and its counterpart in Osaka at 39,590, lower than the index’s last close of 40,603.79. At this level, the index will hit its lowest point in three weeks.
In contrast, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index looks set to open higher, with HSI futures at 17,450 compared to its last close of 17,417.68.
On Wall Street, all three major indexes retreated on Friday and U.S. stock markets wrapped up the week defined by a rotation out of this year’s mega cap winners in favor of smaller names.
The S&P 500 dropped 0.71%, while the tech heavy Nasdaq Composite slid 0.81%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 377.49 points, or 0.93%, to 40,287.53.
— CNBC’s Alex Harring and Jesse Pound contributed to this report.
