By Jamie McGeever
(Reuters) – A look at the day ahead in Asian markets.
A fairly heavy sprinkling of Asian economic data and an interest rate decision in Indonesia dominate the regional calendar on Wednesday, as investors digest another uptick in Chinese stocks and brace for Nvidia’s fourth quarter earnings report.
Stocks and risk appetite in Asia could fall at the open on Wednesday after worries over the U.S. chip designer and artificial intelligence leader’s results slammed its shares and pushed the broader U.S. indexes into the red on Tuesday.
The 4.4% drop in Nvidia’s shares was the biggest fall since October, and the Nasdaq lost 1%.
In Asia, stock markets in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan will be particularly sensitive to the results. These three regions accounted for 46% of Nvidia’s revenue in the third quarter.
Investors will be keen to see whether Nvidia warns again that U.S. curbs on selling its chips to China are hurting its business and longer-term prospects. Nvidia has come up with new products for the Chinese market, but there is a risk that they will also be banned like its first round of China market chips.
Nvidia is also grappling with supply shortages at its Taiwan-based chip contractor TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng has underperformed this year, and is currently down 4.7% year to date. The performance of its tech sector has been even more dismal – it is down 13%.
But the tentative recovery in Chinese stocks from recent five-year lows – the CSI 300 index of leading blue chips is now basically flat year-to-date – should lend support.
The Shanghai Composite and CSI300 are gunning for a sixth and seventh straight day of gains, respectively, which would be their longest winning streaks since January last year. China’s interest rate cut on Tuesday could keep that run going.
Elsewhere on the policy front, Indonesia’s central bank will keep its key seven-day repo rate unchanged at 6.00% on Wednesday, according to all 30 economists in a Reuters poll.
Opinion over the rest of the year is more mixed, but the median forecast is for Bank Indonesia to start cutting rates by 25 basis points in the second quarter, and by the same amount every quarter this year, down to 5.25% by the end of December.
Indonesia’s inflation rate has stayed within BI’s 1.5% to 3.5% target range since July, suggesting cumulative rate hikes of 250 basis points are working. The rupiah is down 1.7% against the dollar this year, but has performed better than many of its peers.
Elsewhere in Asia on Wednesday Japan releases its latest trade data and tankan surveys of manufacturing and non-manufacturing activity, South Korea publishes producer price inflation figures, and Australia releases hourly wage growth data for Q4 last year.
Here are key developments that could provide more direction to markets on Wednesday:
– Indonesia interest rate decision
– Japan trade (January)
– South Korea produce price inflation (January)
(By Jamie McGeever; Editing by Josie Kao)
