Investing.com - Asian shares were mixed on Monday with weekend political news of note for the fortunes of center-leaning parties on the wane in New Zealand and Germany - both of which use mixed-member proportional voting systems.
The Nikkei 225 rose 0.58%, while Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.29%. In Greater China, the Shanghai Composite fell 0.30% and the Hang Seng index dippe 0.86%.
The AfD stunned the German political establishment by finishing third and entering parliament for the first time, with 13.5% of the vote. Under Germany's mixed-member proportional voting system, that vaults in well beyond the 5% threshold needed for seats in parliament.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU and Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union (CSU), won 32.5% of the vote, making them by far the largest parliamentary group, according to an exit poll for the broadcaster ARD, but that is down from 41.5% in the last election in 2013 and lower than recent polling. Their closest rivals, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), slumped to 20.0%, a new post-war low.
Merkel now needs to work to form a coalition reportedly without the SPD, a process that will likely involve protracted negotiations.
In New Zealand, Bill English's National Party and the Labour party will vie for the support of kingmaker Winston Peters and his New Zealand First Party.
Elsewhere, a 3.4 magnitude earthquake in North Korea reaised speculation of a nuew nuclear test, but monitoring agencies were split on whether itw as a natural event or a nuclear detonation.
U.S. stocks closed mostly unchanged on Friday amid escalating U.S.-N.Korea tensions after President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong un traded insults amid expectations that Pyongyang is preparing to test a nuclear bomb.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed higher at 22349.59. The S&P 500 closed 0.06% higher while the Nasdaq Composite closed at 6426.92, down 0.46%.
Investors had to content with renewed political uncertainty as President Donald Trump reacted to Kim Jong-un’s earlier insult calling Trump a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard" and hinting that Pyongyang was preparing to test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.
Some analysts were quick to downplay the latest act of provocation from the Kim Jong-un led nation, insisting that markets will shrug off geopolitical uncertainty as the threat of military action is somewhat improbable.
“As long as there is no military action from the either side, markets will continue to ignore the threats from North Korea,” said Wouter Sturkenboom, senior investment strategist at Russell Investments.
The uptick in safe-haven demand weighed on sentiment but losses were limited by a surge in energy, one of the best performing sectors of the session, as crude futures notched a third weekly win on Friday.
On the corporate front, shares of Apple Inc (NASDAQ:NASDAQ:AAPL) dropped for the third straight day, suffering its worst week in more than year as the tech giant struggles to shake off recent criticism of its latest smartwatch the Apple Watch 3.