China loses spot as world's No.2 stock market: Bloomberg

SHANGHAI — China's stock market has been overtaken as the world's second-biggest by Japan's, having been swiped this year by the threat of a trade war with the United States and slowing economic growth.

Data from Bloomberg News in intra-day trade on Friday showed the value of equities on the mainland had slipped behind those in their neighbouring country for the first time since taking the number-two spot in 2014.

The figures showed Chinese stocks were worth $6.09 trillion, compared with $6.17 trillion in Japan. The US market is worth $31 trillion.

While global markets have been broadly hit by fears of a trade war between the world's top two economies, Chinese equities are among the worst performers this year, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index slumping more than 16 percent since the start of January.

The pressure was ratcheted up this week when the White House said it was considering more than doubling threatened tariffs on a range of Chinese imports worth $200 billion.


Washington has already imposed tariffs on $34 billion worth of goods and is considering hitting another $16 billion in the coming weeks.

"Losing the ranking to Japan is the damage caused by the trade war," Banny Lam, head of research at CEB International Investment in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg News.

"The Japan equity gauge is relatively more stable around the current level but China's market cap has slumped from its peak this year."

Adding to the selling has been a string of data indicating economic growth is slowing, while Beijing has embarked on a drive to cut a worryingly large debt mountain as well as reduce pollution.

Also worrying investors are the yuan's recent losses, with the currency at its lowest level against the dollar for more than a year, while traders have been mostly unmoved by government measures and promises to support the economy.

At the same time, Japanese corporate results have been broadly upbeat, providing some support to markets there, though the Nikkei is still slightly down this year.

"Investors are paying attention to government policies as the US-China trade war will remain uncertain for now," Yoshihiro Okumura, general manager at Chibagin Asset Management, told AFP in Tokyo.

"On the other hand, Japanese companies are showing strong results in general, sustaining share prices on the Tokyo Stock Exchange."

However, he added: "The Tokyo market is not in top form. The country is also subject to the trade war as it is heavily relying on global trade."

Chinese stocks have been on a rollercoaster since taking the second spot in 2014.

Fuelled by risky investing by individual investors looking for a quick profit, the market surged through early 2015 to hit a high of $10 trillion, but then the bubble burst and it went into a downward spiral, with the Shanghai composite crashing about 40 percent.

source: philstar.com

China fears, global growth doubts grip markets

MADRID - Markets are watching for China's next move as signs of a slowdown in the world's second-largest economy stack up, raising expectations it will act to stoke growth.

A looming snap election in Greece and a closely watched conference hosted by the Federal Reserve in the United States are also likely to keep investors on their toes in the coming week, in particular as they look for hints on when the U.S. will raise interest rates.

Fears that Chinese growth is weakening, dragging down the global economy with it, are hammering commodities and stocks.

Alarm bells rang out across world markets on Monday as a 9 percent dive in Chinese shares and a sharp drop in the dollar and major commodities panicked investors.

On Friday, a survey showed Chinese manufacturing slowed the most since the global financial crisis in 2009 - adding to other worrying clues about the country's health, including its falling exports.

China devalued the yuan earlier in August by pushing its official guidance rate down 2 percent. The central bank has said there was no reason for the currency to fall further, but investors are also bracing for further interest rate cuts.

"It will be all eyes on the Chinese authorities for any further policy support steps, alongside the People's Bank of China yuan fixings and trading swings," analysts at Investec Economics said in a note to clients.

China is also widely expected to relax reserve requirements ratios for its banks again in the coming months, a measure intended to spur lending by reducing the cash they need to hold. It is trying to keep its economy on course to grow 7 percent in 2015 - its slowest pace in a quarter of a century.

"We continue to expect a total of 100 basis points of reserve requirement ratio cuts by end-2015, with the first cut likely to take place within the next two weeks," economists at Standard Chartered said.

The cash reserves ratio has already been cut three times this year.

Eyes on Fed, Greece

By the end of the coming week, attention may shift away to the Rocky Mountains, where policymakers are due to gather from Aug. 27-29 for the Fed's conference of central bankers, finance ministers, academics and financial market participants in Jackson Hole.

Fed chair Janet Yellen is not expected to attend, raising the prospect that other Fed officials may be more tight-lipped about the likelihood of the first rate increase in almost a decade, some analysts said.

The prospect of an increase as soon as September is receding, however.

Last week the Fed released minutes of its July meeting, giving no clear signals as to the timing of such a move - which would affect markets across the world and could cause more pain for emerging market assets, already being hit by China's woes.

Though they were more confident about U.S. growth prospects, the minutes showed, Fed policymakers are concerned about weakness in the global economy - fears likely to have been heightened by Monday's market rout in which the dollar also fell sharply.

Further clues on both matters should be gleaned from data releases in the coming week, including second-quarter U.S. gross domestic product figures due on Thursday.

Quarter-on-quarter growth in the period is expected to be revised upwards to 3.2 percent from 2.3 percent, according to a Reuters poll.

In the euro zone, investors will be looking at an German economic sentiment survey due on Tuesday for a better idea of the scope of the bloc's recovery.

Preliminary August consumer price readings for Germany and Spain on Friday will provide further insight into how effective the European Central Bank's bond-buying efforts have been at warding off deflation.

But the spotlight will mainly fall once again on Greece, where Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has resigned. That opens the way for early elections after he secured much-needed funds in the country's third international bailout program.

The current Greek government aims to strengthen its position in the election after accepting a rescue deal it once opposed. But that creates more uncertainty for markets already on edge over whether Greece will deliver on promised reforms and get its economy and banks back on track.

source: interaksyon.com

Asia extends losses as China woes spread, yen shoots up

TOKYO - Asian equities extended losses on Thursday as concerns over China's market turmoil spread, while the safe-haven yen shot to a seven-week high as global risk appetite ebbed.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan shed 0.2 percent, hovering near a 17-month low struck the previous day.

Japan's Nikkei dropped 1.8 percent, Australian shares lost 0.3 percent and South Korea's Kospi fell 0.9 percent.

The focus in Asia again turned towards how Chinese stocks would fare later in the session, with a series of increasingly aggressive attempts by authorities so far having failed to stem the massive exodus from a once booming market.

The country's stock markets have plunged nearly 30 percent over the last three weeks.

"Fundamentally, China is coming back to a point of attraction –the monstrous P/E ratios have come back to more realistic levels. However, the bursting bubble means value is unlikely to factor into thinking in the interim. The repercussions haven't completely played out yet," Evan Lucas, market strategist at IG in Melbourne, wrote.

China's securities regulator took the drastic step late on Wednesday of ordering shareholders with stakes of more than 5 percent from selling shares for the next six months in a bid to halt a plunge in stock prices.

U.S. shares slid sharply overnight on growing fears that nose-diving Chinese shares could destabilize the world's second- largest economy and have global implications.

The doom-and-gloom mood - already heightened earlier in the month by prospects of Greece leaving the euro - benefited the yen, often sought in times of economic uncertainty.

The dollar stood little changed at 120.815 yen, within reach of a seven-week low of 120.41 touched overnight when it suffered a bruising 1.5 percent fall.

The greenback was weighed down further as U.S. Treasury yields continued falling on flight-to-safety bids and new signs that the Federal Reserve may be hesitant about raising interest rates, as shown by their policy meeting minutes.

The dollar's tumble against the yen helped the euro, which climbed to $1.1075, pulling further away from a one-month trough of $1.0916 plumbed on Tuesday.

Commodities, far from immune to the slide in global equities, remained subdued. U.S. crude nudged up 0.4 percent to $51.86 early on Thursday but has shed nearly nine percent so far this week.

Copper received a reprieve overnight thanks to the dollar's plunge, but the metal still remained within reach of a six-year low. Copper on the London Metal Exchange was down 0.4 percent at $5,495 a tonne after hitting the six-year trough of $5,240 a tonne on Wednesday.

source: interaksyon.com