Asia-Pacific markets were down on Monday, and Wall Street dropped on Friday stateside, as investors got a break on the AI trade.
Portfolio Manager at Argent Capital Management, Jed Ellerbroek, said that ″[Friday] is a value-outperforms-growth day. Investors are definitely skittish as it relates to AI — not outright pessimistic, but just kind of, I think, cautious and nervous and hesitant.”
Asian traders will also be seeking key information from China, which will publish its retail sales, fixed asset investment, and industrial output figures for November.
However, the Kospi of South Korea dropped 2.16 percent; therefore, the small-cap Kosdaq was 1.17 percent lower. The index heavyweights’ memory chipmaker SK Hynix had declined over 4 percent, while Samsung Electronics fell by 3.3 percent.
Japan declared its fourth-quarter Tankan figures. The index for business optimism on massive Japanese manufacturers surged to +15 for the fourth quarter, reaching the highest level in four years.
The index for business optimism among large Japanese manufacturers increased to +15 for the fourth quarter, hitting the highest level in four years. Similarly, the non-manufacturing index for the fourth quarter came in at +34.
The Tankan survey is conducted by the Bank of Japan and is used to gauge the business sentiment among the companies in the fourth-largest economy in the world.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 decreased 0.66 percent. The Nikkei 225 of Japan went down by 1.3 percent and the Topix by 0.27 percent. The Hang Seng index of Hong Kong fell 0.79 percent, and the mainland CSI 300 was level, following a series of major economic statistics in China.
Last month, retail sales increased 1.3 percent compared to a year ago, which significantly falls short of the Reuters median expectation of 2.8 percent growth, and is less than the 2.9 percent growth in the previous month.
Industrial production increased 4.8 percent in November, compared to the previous year, which declined from 4.9 percent in the prior month and missed expectations for up 5 percent.
Meanwhile, the S&P 500 was down 1.07 percent on a record on Friday in the U.S., and the Nasdaq Composite was down 1.69 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a 0.51 percent decline after recording a new intraday all-time high during the session.
The AI-related stocks were under pressure throughout the session, with stocks of Broadcom falling over 11 percent and pulling the broad market index and tech-sensitive Nasdaq. AMD, Palantir Technologies, and Micron were also down.
