HONG KONG, July 3 — Asian stocks retreated today and the dollar edged up after a disappointingly big drop in US employment prompted investors to pull back from commodities and resource-linked shares.
But the equity market decline across Asia was limited as the report showing that US companies slashed nearly half a million jobs in June did not shake hopes that a slow recovery is under way.
The Australian dollar, whose 12 per cent surge against the US dollar this year has been closely tied to the four-month rally in stocks, bounced back from a slide the previous day as the US payrolls report had limited fallout.
Analysts at Rabobank said the US jobs report was a "reality check" for investors who had become overly optimistic about how quickly the global economy could recover from its deepest recession in decades.
Oil and copper extended their slide. US crude struck a one-month low and was down 2 cents a barrel at US$66.71. Government bonds jumped, with the benchmark Japanese 10-year yield touching a three-month low.
"US jobs data dented brewing hopes of an economic turnaround, but share losses were limited as investors here did not necessarily take it as a sign of a further slowdown of global economies," said Won Jong-hyuck, a market analyst at SK Securities in Seoul.
The MSCI index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan dipped 0.3 per cent and was down 0.6 per cent during the first three trading days of the third quarter.
In the April-June quarter, the MSCI benchmark for Asian shares surged 32 per cent — its biggest quarterly gain since 1993 — on investor hopes that Asia's emerging economies would help lead the global economy out of the doldrums.
Data from fund tracker EPFR Global showed that global emerging markets received a record amount of funds in the second quarter. China-focused funds took in US$3.8 billion (RM13.3 billion), while Asian funds excluding Japan took in more than US$23 billion.
Japan's Nikkei average shed 0.6 per cent, dragged down by a 5 per cent slide in Seven & I Holdings when the operator of department stores and supermarkets reported an unexpected drop in quarterly profit. Other Japanese retailers also lost ground.
The pull-back in energy prices knocked down shares of oil distributor Nippon Oil by 2 per cent.
Asian stocks held up relatively well after the US S&P 500 slid 2.9 per cent on the jobs data.
US markets are closed today in observance of the Independence Day holiday tomorrow.
In currencies, the dollar edged up as investors favoured the greenback as a safe haven while positions in riskier currencies and assets were cut.
The dollar index, a gauge of its performance against six major currencies, rose a tad to 80.22.
The euro was little changed at US$1.4010, down from a one-month peak near US$1.42 hit earlier in the week, hit by hedge fund selling before the long US weekend. The dollar drifted up 0.1 per cent to 96.07 yen.
The Australian dollar climbed nearly 1 per cent to US$0.7987 after a nearly 2 per cent tumbled the previous day.
The worries about the recovery outlook added fuel to gains in government bonds.
The 10-year JGB yield feel as much as 4 basis points to 1.320 per cent, with some buying after an enlarged auction of the maturity found solid demand yesterday to help pay for stimulus spending.
Japan's low yields have prompted domestic investors to go abroad in search of higher returns.
Data from the Ministry of Finance yesterday showed domestic investors snapped up 1.53 trillion yen (RM56 billion) of foreign bonds in the weekend ending June 27, the biggest such weekly purchases in four years. Analysts said those purchases were mainly concentrated in US Treasuries.
Benchmark US Treasury yields are about 2.2 percentage points above JGB yields, holding near their widest gap in eight months and making them attractive to Japanese investors.
Japanese household investors have also been hefty buyers of new mutual funds targetting foreign assets, keeping yen gains in check as the money flows abroad. — Reuters
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