China & Hong Kong Modestly Lower

Chinese tech stocks faltered after yesterday’s rally, with caution surrounding Tencent’s impending earnings release and some concerns re: the lack of concrete assurances re: lower regulatory burden for the space in the wake of yesterday’s high level Chinese policymaker-tech executive meeting weighing.

• Headline index moves were relatively modest in the wider scheme of things, with the Hang Seng and CSI 300 trading down a mere 0.6% at typing.
• Questions surrounding the spread of COVID in the Chinese cities of Beijing, Tianjin & Sichuan still remain evident, even as the situation in Shanghai improves.
• The downtick in Chinese equities seemed to feed through into e-minis, with the 3 major contracts sitting 0.2-0.5% lower on the day, as the NASDAQ leads the weakness.
• Elsewhere, Australia’s ASX 200 and Japan’s Nikkei 225 added less than 1.0% as participants weighed up Tuesday’s positive lead from Wall St. with the aforementioned China-specific headwinds.