Economic Releases Dips Major Asian Indices

Major Asian indexes fell on Monday as China’s retail sales in July rose by 8.5% missing the forecast by 2.5%. While the industrial production figure missed estimates by 1.5% rising by 6.4% year-on-year. Fixed Assets Investments also missed estimates of 11.3% rising to 10.3% year-on-year. Chinese regulators commented the adverse impact is due to global and domestic uncertainties as Delta variant sweeps in. They further commented that economic recovery might miss target estimates since the country maintains a zero-tolerance policy to limit the spread of the virus which limits economic activity. Accordingly, Goldman Sachs cut down GDP growth from 8.6% to 8.3%.

 

Japan’s GDP on the other hand rose by 0.3% in the second quarter in comparison to its contraction by 0.9% in the first quarter. While industrial products year-on-year rose to 23.0% relative to 22.6% in the prior period.

Thailand’s National Economic Development council this morning reported second-quarter GDP grew by 7.5% beating the estimate of 6.6% thanks to the depreciation of Thai Baht which boosted exports and government spending. However, the market watches closely as the country is hit hard by the Delta variant with slow rollout of vaccines. The Thai regulators already cut down the GDP growth forecast from 1.5-2.5% to 0.7-1.2%.

 

As of mid-day, the South Korea KOSPI is down by 1.6%, Japan Nikkei -1.6%, Indonesia -1.03% and SET index down by 6.46%.