Asian stocks fall on rate, tech jitters; China has explosive returns via Investing.com

Investing.com– Most Asian markets fell on Tuesday, tracking overnight weakness on Wall Street, as strength in the U.S. labor market fueled bets that interest rates will remain relatively high.

Chinese markets far outperformed their like-for-like performance, rising sharply as trading resumed after a week and as investors reacted to a wave of stimulus measures from Beijing.

Other Asian markets took a weak lead from Wall Street, which fell sharply as traders priced in a smaller rate cut in November. US stock index futures were lower in Asian trade.

Asian tech stocks were the biggest losers on Tuesday, tracking overnight weakness in their US peers amid regulatory jitters and negative analyst commentary.

Chinese markets soar on stimulus

Indexes and China rose between 6% and 8% in early trade after opening as much as 13%.

Trading resumed after the Golden Week holiday, with investors buying into Chinese markets after Beijing announced a raft of major stimulus measures to boost economic growth.

Chinese officials are due to hold a briefing later on Tuesday to outline how they plan to implement more stimulus measures.

Ahead of the Golden Week holiday, the Chinese government launched a series of stimulus measures, including interest rate cuts, lower reserve requirements for banks, looser housing market rules and liquidity measures targeting the stock market.

Buying in China was also driven by a heavy dose of bargain hunting, with the country’s benchmark indices falling to seven-month lows in September.

But investors were still eyeing more stimulus measures in the country, particularly targeted fiscal measures.

Asian shares slip amid rate uncertainty, tech losses

With the exception of China, broader Asian markets fell on Tuesday, tracking overnight weakness on Wall Street. U.S. stocks fell sharply on Monday as signs of resilience in the labor market — on the back of stronger-than-expected data — fueled bets on a slower pace of interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.

Losses were largely biased towards tech stocks, particularly after US majors Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: ), Apple Inc (NASDAQ: ) and Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: ) fell on Monday.

Hong Kong’s index fell nearly 4 percent on Tuesday amid massive gains after rising to a more than a year high on optimism over China’s stimulus measures.

Japan fell 1.2 percent, while the index fell 1.1 percent. The data showed some slowdown in August, but Japanese remained strong, which could support inflationary expectations.

South Korea lost 0.7%, weighed down by a 1.5% decline in Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (KS:) after the tech giant forecast a weaker-than-expected third-quarter profit. Samsung’s rival SK Hynix Inc (KS:) fell more than 2%.

Losses in Australia’s index were capped by optimism over China, given its strong trade exposure to Asia’s biggest economy. Separate data also showed Australia improved in October.