Focus On Chinese Property Developers

Thursday saw a relatively mundane round of trade for the major equity indices in Asia, at least at face value, with the notable indices dealing either side of unchanged at typing.

• Still, as has been the case in recent times, there was plenty of focus on the Chinese property developer space. China Evergrande & Hopson both filed resumption of trading notices on the HKEx. This comes after news that the potential sale of the former's property services unit to the latter had collapsed, increasing pressure on the giant as the countdown to official default on its debt continues to tick over. Evergrande lost ~10% on the day, while Hopson added ~5%. Elsewhere in the sector, property developer Modern Land China suspended trading in Hong Kong pending the release of inside information after noting that it continues to face "liquidity issues." Finally, Fitch placed 29 Chinese property developers on UCO after a criteria update.
• U.S. e-minis were little changed to a touch lower, which came in the wake of a modest uptick for both the S&P 500 & the DJIA on Wednesday. The NASDAQ 100 lost a little bit of ground on Wednesday as most of the U.S. Tsy curve cheapened on the day, although the tech index finished off of worst levels.