Asian Stocks Up, While Dim Tech Outlook Hits U.S. Futures

© Reuters.

By Gina Lee

Investing.com – Asia Pacific stocks were mostly up on Friday morning. U.S. equity futures fell after post-earnings falls in Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) shares dampened some of the optimism from a Wall Street rally.

China’s Shanghai Composite gained 0.47% by 10:12 PM ET (2:12 AM GMT) while the Shenzhen Component was up 0.27%. The Caixin manufacturing and services purchasing managers indexes (PMIs), as well as the manufacturing and non-manufacturing PMIs, are due in the following week.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was down 0.30%.

South Korea’s KOSPI rose 0.86% and in Australia, the ASX 200 gained 0.78%. The Australian producer price index grew 4.9% year-on-year and 1.6% quarter-on-quarter in the first quarter of 2022.

Japanese markets are closed for a holiday.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 contracts retreated, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq falling over 1% after Amazon forecast sluggish sales growth and Apple warned of supply constraints. Amazon shares tumbled 9% in extended trading and Apple’s fell 2%, eclipsing the S&P 500’s best climb since early March 2022 in regular hours.

Meanwhile, the yen slowly clawed back its losses after tumbling past 130 per dollar to 20-year lows, and the yuan weakened at a pace comparable to China’s shock 2015 devaluation. The dollar fell but is set for its best week since 2021 as caution remains that the U.S. Federal Reserve will hike interest rates aggressively.

In commodities, oil remained near the $105 mark, as investors evaluate the possibility of a European Union ban on Russian crude due to the country’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. Concerns about the war in Ukraine, China’s latest COVID-19 outbreaks, and tighter U.S. monetary policy all continue to contribute to market volatility.

“The Fed’s record on soft landings is not that strong,” BMO Family Office LLC deputy chief investment officer Carol Schleif told Bloomberg.

“Markets are watching very, very carefully to see if we can thread that needle.”

The latest U.S. GDP, released on Thursday, unexpectedly contracted 1.4% quarter-on-quarter in the first quarter of 2022, the first time it has done so since 2020.

The GDP figure also emphasized the debate on how much the Fed can tighten monetary policy without impacting economic growth. Investors now await the Fed’s latest policy decision, which will be handed down during the following week.

U.S. Treasuries steadied on Thursday, with the benchmark 10-year U.S. yield at 2.82% and Treasury futures edging up. There is no cash trading due to the holiday in Japan.

“A year from now, 10-year yields are most likely going to be lower than where we are today,” Rockefeller Financial LLC chief investment officer Jimmy Chang told Bloomberg, in reference to Treasuries.

“I do believe at some point when the economy starts to weaken, the Fed will be less hawkish, perhaps even go into a pause mode by, say, early 2023.”