Asian Stock Market: Covid woes entertain bears with mild losses

• Asian equities post small losses as virus woes probe the bulls amid a subdued session.
• Australia, Thailand announced new restrictions, Malaysia on the way.
• US stimulus keeps buyers hopeful even as reflation, covid fears weigh on sentiment.
• Fedspeak in the focus ahead of Friday’s US NFP.

Asian shares remain pressured as the region struggles with the fresh coronavirus (COVID-19) wave amid a light calendar and dead feeds.

Fresh expansion to the activity restrictions in Sydney and Bangkok portrays the covid woes in the Asia-Pacific area. Also, Indonesia’s struggle with record covid cases and Malaysia’s readiness to announce more curbs to tame the pandemic keep markets dull ahead into Monday’s European session.

That said, MSCI’s index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan drops 0.12% intraday whereas Japan’s Nikkei 225 justifies slightly downbeat concerns marked in BOJ summary to back the drop 0.30% by the press time.

Australia’s ASX 200 and New Zealand’s NZX 50 struggle to justify covid woes and weekend data from China, despite being mildly offered. Further, Chinese stocks stay depressed even as Industrial Profits eased in May.

Elsewhere, South Korea’s KOSPI and India’s BSE Sensex print around 0.10-15% intraday losses while Indonesia’s IDX Composite leads the losses with 0.85% downside by the press time.

On a broader front, the US 10-year Treasury yield drops 1.2 basis points (bps) whereas S&P 500 Futures seesaw around Friday’s record top. The macro barometers seem to benefit from US President Joe Biden’s infrastructure spending passage while trying to tame the fresh reflation fears triggered by the US Core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index, the Fed’s preferred gauge of Inflation, jumped to the highest in the near three decades with 3.4% YoY figures in May.

It’s worth noting that the WTI oil prices refreshed the highest levels since October 2018 before easing from $74.16 whereas gold gains 0.10% intraday around $1,781 at the time of writing.

Considering the lack of major data/events, except for Fedspeak and China’s official PMIs, ahead of Friday’s US Nonfarm Payrolls, Asian markets are likely to remain sluggish, but pressured, before the American jobs release.

Read: S&P 500 Futures seesaw around near record top below 4,300 on mixed clues