By Alex Ho
Investing.com - Asian markets were mixed on Monday morning, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 underperforming its regional peers after data showed the country’s economy shrank at the fastest pace in six years.
The Nikkei 225 was down 0.8% by 10:55 PM ET (02:55 GMT). Japan’s GDP in the December quarter fell an annualized 6.3%, faster than the expected 3.7% contraction, data from the Cabinet Office showed on Monday.
The drop, which followed a revised 0.5% gain in July-September, was the biggest since a 7.4% decline marked in April-June 2014.
China’s Shanghai Composite and the Shenzhen Component gained 1.3% and 2.0% respectively as investors continued to monitor the potential economic fallout from the coronavirus in China.
On Sunday, China reported 1,933 new cases, down from 2,009 the previous day, and 100 new deaths, down one from 142 the previous day.
“The worrying human and economic toll of the COVID-19 outbreak is creating much uncertainty, especially as changes to the case tracking methods are making news difficult to interpret,” John Bromhead from ANZ Research wrote in a morning note.
The Hang Seng Index traded 0.8% higher even after the Hong Kong’s Financial Secretary Paul Chan said the city is facing “tsunami-like” shocks.
He said in a blog post on Sunday that economic fallout due to the virus outbreak is being felt beyond retail, food and beverage and tourism-related industriesand can cause the unemployment rate to “Deteriorate rapidly.”
South Korea’s KOSPI and Australia’s ASX 200 both inched down 0.1%.
Elsewhere, Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry downgraded its forecast range for the change in the country’s annual gross domestic product to between -0.5% and 1.5% from the previous 0.5% and 2.5% range.
“The (earlier) forecast was premised on a modest pickup in global growth, along with a recovery in the global electronics cycle, in 2020. Since then, the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has affected China, Singapore and many countries around the world,” the ministry said in a statement.