Asian bourses kicked off the session mixed, with mild underperformance in Tokyo following its rally yesterday. Australia is trading sideways ahead of the RBA monetary policy decision. Tencent and NetEase shares are under stress, down 8% and 10%, respectively, with reports citing commentary from China’s Economic Information Daily calling online gaming a widespread addiction and warning of health consequences.
On the COVID front, in China, coronavirus concerns are becoming a growing risk for investors. There were 61 cases reported in the past 24 hours, up from 55 the day before. As a result of the constantly growing infections, millions of people have been placed under lockdown in an attempt to contain its largest outbreak in months with mass testing and travel curbs. The delta variant has now spread to 20 cities.
On Wall Street, equities traded soft on Monday after overnight strength faded into the session on the back of a disappointing US ISM Manufacturing survey report for July. Tesla was an outperformer on the Tech front, seeing tailwinds from strong sales reports from Chinese competitors in the Electric Vehicles space. Many traders have their eyes on the back half of the week as they head into the July US Nonfarm Payrolls report.
