Japan Underperforms, While Hong Kong Leads The Way

Asia-Pac equities lacked a coherent direction on Tuesday. The Nikkei 225 was the underperformer when it came to the major regional benchmarks, shedding the best part of 1%, with the communications and IT sectors leading the weakness after Tokyo Electron provided a disappointing earnings report. At the other end of the spectrum, the Hang Seng outperformed, adding 1%, with a Hong Kong city official flagging a desire to move to a zero-quarantine status for international travellers by November and the potential for a waiving of the double stamp duty covering home purchases on the part of mainland Chinese buyer supporting the broader index. Elsewhere, the benchmark Chinese CSI 300 and U.S. e-mini futures (all +0.2% at typing) struggled for meaningful direction, with focus remaining on questions surrounding the height/length of the current Fed tightening cycle, the COVID situation in China and ongoing tensions re: Taiwan, which proved to be limiting factors