Asian stocks open mostly positive near 3-month low

Asian stocks opened the third session of the week on mixed performance yet mostly positive, following its American counterpart. With a rise in the Chinese, Australian and New Zealand stocks, as well as Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index and South Korea's Kospi Index. While the Japanese stocks negatively stabilized on Wednesday.

This came hours after the US President, Donald Trump, noted that trade talks with China had not collapsed, and the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said that Beijing and Washington agreed to continue trade negotiations. This came after China announced that it would increase tariffs on imports of US goods by $60 billion to 25% from 10% by June, in response to a similar decision in which Washington approved tariff increases on imports of Chinese goods worth $200 billion.

We would like to point out that China's decision at the beginning of the week highlighted the escalating trade war between China and the United States, which rose tariffs on Chinese goods valued at $200 billion, from 10% to 25%, bringing China's customs duties to 25%, at about $250 billion, amid a threat by the US President' administration to impose 25% customs duties on other Chinese goods estimated at $325 billion soon.

US President, Trump, said that he would talk with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, at the G20 summit by the end of next month in Japan. While markets are still pricing the prospects of a slowing global economic growth, which is expected to be reflected on corporate profits later, especially following the economic data by the Chinese economy, the world's second largest economy after the United States, which was overall disappointing.

We have followed the National Bureau of Statistics of China's release of the annual reading of the Retail Sales Index, which showed a slowdown in growth to 7.2% from 8.7% in March, worse than expectations of 8.6%. This came in conjunction with the Industrial Production Index's annual reading, which showed a slowdown to 5.4% versus 8.5% in March, also worse than expectations of 6.5%. while Unemployment rate reading showed a drop to 5.0% from 5.2% in March.

In terms of trading, the Japanese stock indices witnessed a decline during today's trading session, with the broad Topix index falling by 0.03% losing 0.47 points down to the level of 1,534.51, while Nikkei 225 also fell by 0.08% shedding 15.99 points down to 21,051.24 level.

On the other hand, China's CSI 300 rose by 1.17% (42.66 points) to reach 3,687.81. While the Shanghai Composite Index rose by 0.97% (27.92 points) to reach the level of 2,911.53.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index gained 0.69% (192.67 points) to 28,314.69, while South Korea's Kospi also rose 0.64%, 13.13 points to 2,095.17.

To the NZX 50 index of New Zealand stocks, which rose by 0.80 (80.49 points) to reach 10,150.84. On the other hand, the S&P/ASX 200 index of Australian shares rose by 0.64% (39.69 points) to 6,279.60.