Asia Morning Focus on US China Hong Kong

On Friday U.S. stocks pared early losses to close with modest gains. Market focus remained on Hong Kong and heightened tensions between the U.S. and China. China announced plans to impose a "new" national-security law on Hong Kong, which are widely expected to erode the city's autonomy. U.S. President Donald Trump said his country would react strongly if  China follows through on those plans. 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was little changed at 24465, the S&P 500 edged up 6 points (+0.2%) to 2955, and the Nasdaq 100 was up 36 points (+0.4%) to 9414.


Source: GAIN Capital, TradingView

Real Estate (+2.21%), Utilities (+1.13%) and Household & Personal Products (+0.85%) sectors performed the best, while Banks (-0.8%), Energy (-0.67%) and Consumer Services (-0.47%) sectors were laggards.

Arconic (ARNC +13.83%), Coty (COTY +12.61%), American Tower (AMT +6.25%) and Agilent Technologies (A +5.24%) were top gainers, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE -11.49%), Foot Locker Inc (FL -8.49%) and Wynn Resorts (WYNN -5.89%) lost the most. 

On the technical side, about 32.0% (35.0% in the prior session) of stocks in the S&P 500 Index were trading above their 200-day moving average, and 65.7% (73.1% in the prior session) were above their 20-day moving average.

The U.S. Market will be closed today to observe Memorial Day.

European stocks were mixed, with the Stoxx Europe 600 Index ending flat. Germany's DAX edged up less than 0.1%, the U.K.'s FTSE 100 dropped 0.4%, while France's CAC was little changed.

U.S. Treasury prices remained firm, as the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield eased further to 0.659%.

Spot gold price rebounded $8 (+0.5%) to $1,734 an ounce.

Oil prices softened on concerns that demand could be hurt by the U.S.-China tensions. U.S. WTI crude oil futures (July) dropped 2.0% to $33.25.

On the forex front, the ICE U.S. Dollar Index rebounded for a second straight session, climbing 0.5% on day to 99.86.

EUR/USD dropped 0.4% to 1.0902. European Central Bank's latest monetary policy accounts showed that officials agreed that "a swift V-shaped recovery could probably already be ruled out at this stage" and "the Governing Council would have to stand ready to adjust the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Program and potentially other instruments if it saw that the scale of the stimulus was falling short of what was needed".