Asian stocks closed mixed and HK property market hit

Asian stocks closed mixed and HK property market hit
Dec 22, 2009 - PropertyGuru.com.sg

Asian markets ended Monday on a mixed note with major indexes posting reasonable moves in pre-holiday trade, as concerns over the cooling measures of the property market weighed on Hong Kong.

"We would expect the remainder of the week to see similar, small moves in Asian markets," said Richard Hastings, a consumer strategist from Global Hunter Securities.

HK’s Hang Seng Index ended 1.1 percent lower; South Korea's Kospi Composite lost 0. 2 percent; New Zealand's NZX-50 closed 0.1 percent lower; and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 dropped 0.3 percent. But Taiwan's main index and Japan's Nikkei 225 both added 0.4 percent, while the Shanghai Composite rose 0.3 percent.

Among the regional markets, India's Sensex lost 0.3 percent, Philippine shares ended up 0.1 percent and Singapore's Straits Times Index closed with 0.4 percent.

Hong Kong shares slipped as concerns over the government’s cooling measures on the property market continued to weigh on real estate developers and banking sectors. This followed China’s announcement of a new rule, requiring a 50 percent down payment for land purchases by all property developers.

Asian markets weakened last week amid rising concerns over property-cooling measures in Beijing, and due to "renewed global crisis fears prompted by the sovereign downgrade of Greece and warnings about potential future downgrades of Spain, the U.K. and the U.S.," said Martin Hennecke, the associate director of Tyche Group Ltd. in Hong Kong. "This sovereign debt crisis is ... only getting started and this clearly warrants caution for all investors, in all markets."

Even so, the stock market in Asia "may not be the worst place to have exposure to", particularly China’s undervaluation of the yuan, the low budget deficit and low sovereign debt of the country, and the economic recovery, said Hennecke.

In Australia, the stock market closed lower after finding support from strength in the resource stocks. Traders "seemed happy to push the market a bit higher on the back of reasonable leads from the U.S. session, but momentum waned in the afternoon and sellers took control" ahead of the holiday season, said Cameron Peacock, a market analyst from IG Markets in Melbourne.