Mostly Higher In Asia; Chinese Developer Sell Off Continues

Most major Asia-Pac equity indices are firmer at typing following the closely-watched joint appearance between U.S. House Speaker Pelosi and Taiwanese President Tsai earlier in the day, although Chinese and Hong Kong benchmarks have pared their initial bids, dragged lower by weakness in Chinese developers.

• The Hang Seng trades 0.6% firmer, paring earlier gains of as much as 1.2% after having opened higher. The loss in momentum comes as the HSTECH (+1.3%) is back from as much as +2.8% higher earlier, although gains in China-based tech equities largely countered continued weakness in the property (-0.8%) and finance (-0.4%) sub-indices.
• The CSI300 sits virtually unchanged at typing, paring gains of as much as 1.1%. Relatively shallow losses across industrials and financials added to gloom in real estate, with the CSI300 Real Estate Index (-1.9%) on track to record a sixth consecutive lower daily close. On the other hand, the healthcare (+1.1%) sub-gauge outperformed, while a broad swathe of defence-related stocks such as Jiangxi Xinyu Guoke (+3.2%) and AECC Aviation Power (+7.8%) were bid for another day.
• The Taiex sits 0.2% worse off at typing, back from as much as 0.5% lower. Weakness in virtually every other equity sector countered outperformance in the heavyweight Semiconductor (+0.7%) sub-gauge, coming as Pelosi had earlier raised the prospect of closer U.S.-Taiwan collaboration re: chips in the Taiwanese Parliament.
• E-minis sit flat to 0.3% better off at typing, operating around the bottom of their respective ranges established on Tuesday.