Forex Marketz Daily Forex News – Fully Markets Update
The Asian and Pacific Rim markets were broadly lower as traders worry over inflammatory comments from the Trump White House over China. President Donald Trump is accusing China of starting the Covid-19 pandemic in a laboratory and has threatened possible tariffs.
The financial markets in China, Japan and Thailand are closed for public holidays on Monday.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index fell over 3.4 percent in the morning. Shares of Chinese tech giant Tencent slumped over 3.5 percent.
The Asian benchmark, the South Korean Kospi composite was down 1.87 percent and the Kosdaq index gave up 0.31 percent in the morning.
Elsewhere in the Asian region, the Australian ASX 200 was down a quarter of a percent. In corporate news, Westpac saw its shares slip 0.36 percent after the lender announced a fall in profits and that they would defer dividends.
Asian Sentiment Sours as Political Tension Mount between the US and China
Tensions between the United States and China, once again, are on the rise. The U.S. President, yesterday, said that he believed that a “mistake” in China was the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic.
President Trump offered no evidence to support his claim. The nation’s top spy agency, the CIA, said that the Covid-19 virus was not man made but was looking into if was released in “an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”
There are reportedly agency documents accusing China of concealing how severe the outbreak was in order to stockpile medical supplies.
Traders Monitor Covid-19 and News of a Possible Vaccine
Traders are still watching headlines surrounding the coronavirus. There are now 3.4 million cases around the world and 244,911 dead. This is according to data from John Hopkins University Medical Center.
Yesterday, President Trump said that he is confident that a coronavirus vaccine will be in place by years end. “We are very confident that we are going to have a vaccine at the end of the year, by the end of the year,” Trump said
U.S. public health officials contradicted him and said that a vaccine could take up to 18 months to be found.
