Aerial view of vehicles being driven on the road through the central business district in Beijing, China.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
Asia-Pacific markets fell Monday, after Wall Street declined Friday stateside as investors took a breather from the AI trade.
“[Friday] is a value-outperforms-growth day,” said Jed Ellerbroek, portfolio manager at Argent Capital Management. “Investors are definitely skittish as it relates to AI — not outright pessimistic, but just kind of, I think, cautious and nervous and hesitant.”
Traders in Asia will also look toward key data from China, which will release its retail sales, fixed asset investment and industrial output numbers for November.
South Korea’s Kospi fell 1.84% to close at 4,090.59 while the small-cap Kosdaq added 0.16% to 938.83. Index heavyweights memory chipmaker SK Hynix was down 2.98%, while Samsung Electronics declined 3.76%.
Japan announced its fourth-quarter Tankan numbers. The index for business optimism among large Japanese manufacturers increased to +15 for the fourth quarter, hitting the highest level in four years.
The latest reading compared to the +14 increase in the previous quarter, and matched expectations of economists polled by Reuters. The non-manufacturing index for the fourth quarter came in at +34.
The Tankan survey, conducted by the Bank of Japan, measures business sentiment among companies in the world’s fourth largest economy.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.72% to end the trading day at 8,635. On Sunday, the country suffered its worst gun attack in over 30 years that left at least 15 dead.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 slid 1.31% to 50,168.11, while the Topix rose 0.22% to 3,431.47.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index lost 0.79%, while the mainland CSI 300 was down 0.63% to 4,552.06, after a slew of key economic data out of China. Retail sales rose 1.3% last month from a year earlier, sharply missing Reuters’ median forecast for a 2.8% growth, and slowing from the 2.9% rise in the prior month.
Industrial production climbed 4.8% in November from a year ago, down from 4.9% in the prior month and missing expectations for a 5% increase.