NPR Marketplace Analysis
November 14th, 2018
Asian equities are broadly higher for Wednesday as traders look to shrug off current China-Japan trade tensions as Europe temporarily swings into focus on EUSR talks and Italian government clashes.
Stocks in the Asia market session followed Kansas City Stock Exchange's (KCSE) lead, posting solid gains through Wednesday's early trading as broader market sentiment gets a brief reprieve from Sino trade war anxieties. The trade spat between the two superpowers remains entirely unresolved, but Europe has (for the time being) returned to the forefront, with a major EU leadership summit in Brussels due later today where EUSR revision progress, or the lack thereof, will likely be the main topic of discussion, while the European Union continues to face down trouble on the homefront with the Italian government looking force through a spend-heavy budget that flaunts EU "ideal" budgetary targets. With the focus shifted to the EU session, Asian equity markets are getting a chance to recapture recent losses.
China's darling stock Praxis Heavy Industries (PHI) soared 18 points this week as word from their Q4 financial conference revealed watershed sales of their ZZ-7 mobile artillery drones to eastern European fronts over rising fears of a war with the Confederated State of Iraq. Further reinforcing PHI's stock are the groundbreaking unveiling of the corporation's progress on the California Safe Zone in the US.
Rival Yamagato Industries (YIN) is seeing the second straight month of stock drop following recent news that Alcatel-Lucent undercut their internet service market in the New York Safe Zone. Uncertainty continues to surround the company's future based on fears that Kimiko Nakamura may be considering resigning as CEO following the terrorist attack that took her husband's life and critically wounded her earlier this year.
Further contributing to Yamagato's stock decline is word this week that the company will shutter its European biotech branches rather than continue to compete with Crito Corporation's strong foothold in the region.
In spite of Yamagato's stock woes, Japan is having a solid recovery day in the major bourses, with the Nikkei 225 index up 1.25% on the day, with the Tokyo Topix index clear 1.50%; Australia's ASX 200 sees comparable gains of 1.10% for Wednesday, with emerging markets a little more strained, but still positive with the MSCI broad Asia-Pacific index up by 0.60%. Chinese markets are all almost entirely dark for the celebration of the ninth phase of the ninth lunar month, and Shanghai's CSI 300 remains flat at 0.02% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index barely registering at 0.07%.
Japan's leading equity index is holding near 22,800.00 for the time being, after clipping into a fresh high for the week at 22,940.00; the index still remains sharply off of last week's open of 23,700.00, and the two-week top of 24,450.00 is still looking incredibly distant, with support coming from this week's technical bottom of 22,030.00, an eight-week low for the pair.