Today, the Asia-Pacific stock markets are declining. After several weeks of almost continuous growth, a period of doubt and a rollback followed, provided by news of a possible recurrence of events associated with the coronavirus pandemic. At least, the sharp increase in the number of cases in China and the United States of America seriously frightened market participants who had not fully recovered from the previous shock.
Yesterday, Chinese authorities announced new cases of infection in Beijing, after which they hastened to return quarantine measures to the city center and surrounding areas. However, while the outbreak could not be suppressed: the number of cases continues to increase and has already exceeded 150 people.
In America, some states also began to record a record number of cases, which has been gone for more than five weeks. Latin America is not far behind negative statistics. In Brazil, incidence records began to be recorded and the total number of infected people was already close to 35 thousand people.
All this was an extremely unpleasant and unexpected moment for the PRC, where the government had already begun to relax, as it considered that it had successfully coped with COVID-19. However, now the situation may repeat itself, and this, of course, does not cause any particular joy among the authorities or the market participants.
The same tense situation is also currently happening in the United States of America. The increase in the number of cases is primarily associated with the ongoing opening of enterprises. This can only mean one thing: quarantine measures began to be removed too early. In this regard, it is not yet clear what the further policy of the official authorities will be.
Australia's ASX 200 index declined by 1.32% in the morning. The main reason was the extremely high unemployment rate in the country, which was announced the day before. Over the last month of spring, unemployment rose to 7.1%. This figure was not so huge for almost twenty years.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index is down by 1.21% today.
China's Shanghai Composite Index fell by 0.36%, while the Shenzhen Component, on the contrary, rose to 0.28%. This was almost the only positive trend of the day.
Japan's Nikkei 225 Index lost 1.17% and the South Korean KOSPI index fell by 0.58%.
Thus, the downward trend has touched almost all indicators, with rare exceptions. In general, the market is dominated by pessimistic sentiment.
The positive that has arisen over the continuation of soft stimulating policies in most countries, as well as the more rapid pace of global economic recovery, is gradually disappearing. In its place come quite serious fears that the economic crisis may become even deeper, and the way out of it will drag on for years.
However, there are optimists among market participants who do not see a problem in new outbreaks of coronavirus infection, since the world already knows how to cope with this, and timely measures taken will immediately bear fruit.
Nonetheless, until investor sentiment improves, the decline in Asian stock markets will continue. And according to some analysts, it can become very protracted.
