Aerial view of vehicles being driven on the road through the central business district on October 5, 2020 in Beijing, China.<\/p>\n
Zhang Qiao | Visual China Group | Getty Images<\/p>\n
Asia-Pacific markets opened December mostly in the red Monday as traders parsed fresh manufacturing data from China and rising expectations of a U.S. Federal Reserve rate cut this month.<\/p>\n
Traders are pricing in an 87.4% rate cut for the upcoming Fed meeting on Dec. 10, according to the CME FedWatch Tool.<\/a><\/p>\n Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index<\/a> opened 0.13% lower, while the mainland CSI 300 was up 0.28%. <\/p>\n China’s factory activity<\/a> unexpectedly contracted in November, according to a private survey released Monday<\/a>, as soft domestic demand continued to cast a pall over the world’s second-largest economy.<\/p>\n The RatingDog China General Manufacturing PMI, conducted by S&P Global, dropped to 49.9 in November, missing analysts’ expectations of 50.5 in a Reuters poll. A reading above the 50 benchmark level suggests an expansion, while one below that indicates contraction.<\/p>\n The gauge follows official data released Sunday<\/a> showing China’s factory activity improving slightly to 49.2 in November, but remained in contraction for the eighth consecutive month. Services weakened as the lift from earlier holidays faded.<\/p>\n Hong Kong-listed firms with exposure to digital assets plunged after the People’s Bank of China warned<\/a> of illegal activities tied to digital currencies and the resurgence of speculation, according to a statement released by the central bank Saturday.<\/p>\n Stocks of Jack Ma-backed Yunfeng Financial<\/a> and Bright Smart<\/a> Securities & Commodities Group tumbled more than 7%, while Guotai Junan<\/a> fell as much as 3%.<\/p>\n Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225<\/a> index fell 1.3%, and the Topix index retreated 0.72%. Among the bottom movers on the Nikkei 225 index were electrical equipment company Fujikura<\/a>, down 8.11%, Sumitomo Pharma<\/a>, which fell 5.82% and Advantest<\/a>, which declined 4.74%.<\/p>\n South Korea’s Kospi index was down 0.66%, while the small-cap Kosdaq advanced 1.29%.<\/p>\n Australia’s ASX\/S&P 200 declined 0.23%.<\/p>\n U.S. equity futures were little changed in early Asian hours after a winning week. <\/p>\n On Friday stateside, Wall Street came back from the Thanksgiving holiday for a shortened trading session. The Nasdaq Composite<\/a> advanced 0.65% to end the day at 23,365.69, scoring its fifth straight day of gains. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, the\u00a0S&P 500<\/a>\u00a0gained 0.54% to settle at 6,849.09. The\u00a0Dow Jones Industrial Average<\/a>\u00a0grew 289.30 points, or 0.61%, to finish at 47,716.42. <\/p>\n \u2014 CNBC’s Anniek Bao, Sean Conlon and Sarah Min contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aerial view of vehicles being driven on the road through the central business district on October 5, 2020…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[66835,4635,964,93454,72,122,11236,11235,113,93457,93455,8176,61,5232,60,123,7066,8493,93456,7228,7229,93453],"class_list":["post-168527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-advantest-corp","tag-asia-economy","tag-breaking-news-markets","tag-bright-smart-securities-commodities-group-ltd","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-central-banking","tag-currency-markets","tag-economy","tag-fujikura-ltd","tag-guotai-junan-international-holdings-ltd","tag-hang-seng-index","tag-ie","tag-interest-rates","tag-ireland","tag-markets","tag-nasdaq-composite","tag-nikkei-225-index","tag-sumitomo-pharma-co-ltd","tag-world-economy","tag-world-markets","tag-yunfeng-financial-group-ltd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}