By Gina Lee
Investing.com – Asia Pacific stocks were mixed on Thursday morning, as investors await more U.S. employment data for further clues on the U.S. Federal Reserve’s timeline for asset tapering.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 inched up 0.03% by 9:50 PM ET (1:50 AM GMT) while South Korea’s KOSPI was down 0.61%.
In Australia, the ASX 200 fell 0.98%, despite better-than-expected trade data for July. Exports grew 5% and imports grew 3% month-on-month, while the trade balance stood at AUD12.117 billion.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index gained 0.66%.
China’s Shanghai Composite was up 0.32% while the Shenzhen Component inched down 0.10%. Chinese tech stocks listed in the U.S. extended a rebound over hopes that the recent regulatory tightening could ease. The People’s Bank of China also said it would provide CNY300 billion ($46.41 billion) of low-cost funding to support small- and medium-sized firms.
Data from the U.S. released on Wednesday showed the ADP nonfarm employment change was 374,000, while the Institute of Supply Management (ISM) manufacturing purchasing managers index was 59.9, in August.
Further data will be released throughout the week, with factory orders as well as trade data including exports, imports and the trade balance, due later in the day. The U.S. jobs report, including non-farm payrolls, will follow a day later.
Investors continue to assess whether the latest COVID-19 outbreaks involving the Delta variant have peaked and the impact on central bank policies. With global shares near record highs and decreasing market volatility, some investors remained optimistic.
“The market is fading COVID-19 more as a risk in terms of really hampering economic activity. We think the Fed is going to stick with their word and they will start asset tapering later in 2021. But we don’t think they are going to be in any hurry to raise interest rates,” Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) Investment Institute head of global asset allocation strategy Tracie McMillion told Bloomberg.
The outlook for the U.S. Treasury market is likely to be one key question, with investor Bill Gross saying that 10-year yields “have nowhere to go but up” and are set to reach 2% over 2022. Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) technical strategist Jason Hunter said that the yield has scope to hit 1.90% in the coming months.
Benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasury yields were near the 1.30%-mark.