Asia Morning Bites: Chinese Stocks Navigate US Investment Ban, Philippines GDP Data Ahead
ING Economics 10.08.2023 09:03
Asia Morning Bites
Chinese stocks weather the latest US investment ban. Chinese lending data today and 2Q23 GDP from the Philippines.
Global Macro and Markets
Global markets: It was another day of slight falls for US stocks on Wednesday, though things could have gone either way until late trading when there was a final dip lower. The S&P 500 fell 0.7% while the NASDAQ fell 1.17%. Chinese stocks were mixed, which isn’t a bad result considering the inflation data which turned negative, and the new US ban on investment in Chinese technology. The Hang Seng fell 0.32%, while the CSI 300 fell 0.31%. US treasury bond yields were also mixed on Wednesday, the 2Y yield rose 5.7bp to 4.808%, though the 10Y yield fell 1.4bp to 4.008% after a good auction. EURUSD recovered a little ground, rising to 1.0976, but failed to make it above 1.10. The AUD and GBP were both fairly flat relative to the previous day, though the JPY saw further losses, rising to 143.657. Asian FX was fairly rangebound yesterday too, with most registering small gains of less than a quarter of a percent.
G-7 macro: US CPI inflation data for July is due today, and we are likely to see something we haven’t seen for some time, namely, annual inflation rising. The good news is that this is mainly due to base effects, and the month-on-month gain in the CPI index is expected to be modest at 0.2%, which is broadly in line with the Fed’s target. The bad news is that this indicates that the going will be a lot heavier for inflation from now on, without those nice helpful base effects that dominated the second quarter. Core inflation is expected to drop only 0.1pp to 4.7%.
China: Aggregate finance data is released today. New CNY loans are forecast to rise by CNY780bn, which puts it slightly ahead of last year’s CNY678bn figure. Given the recent disappointing macro data, there might be some downward surprises here, though loans have been one of the stronger parts of China’s data in recent months.
Philippines: 2Q GDP is set for release today. Market consensus is at 6.0%YoY, a slowdown from the 6.4% reported in 1Q. Elevated prices likely capped household spending while capital formation also probably slowed due to the lagged impact of previous monetary tightening. Government officials are targeting full-year growth of 6-7%YoY, although given various headwinds, we feel that growth may be headed for a slowdown for the rest of the year.
What to look out for: US inflation
Philippines GDP (10 August)
RBI policy meeting (10 August)
US initial jobless claims and CPI inflation (10 August)
Singapore CPI inflation (11 August)
Hong Kong GDP (11 August)
US PPI inflation, University of Michigan sentiment (11 August)