This Friday, China's industrial output significantly improved. The April yields did not, however, affect the performance of Asian stocks in the market.
China's industrial output increased by 3.9 percent on an annual basis in April. According to the data released last Friday by the National Bureau of Statistics, the improvement marked the first expansion of China's metric.
Analysts in a Reuters poll forecasted that China's industrial output for April would only increase by 1.5 percent in retail sales. However, the results showed that it fell by 7.5 percent in April. The decline was said to be the largest fall compared to the expected seven percent.
The data also indicated that investors have been eyeing China for signs of improvements in its markets. Since the pandemic disrupted its economy, China revamped following lockdown measures imposed during the first quarter of 2020.
According to the head of Asia economics at Oxford Economics Louis Kujis, the possibility of a global recession due to the disruptions caused by the pandemic greatly depends on China's economic recovery. He also acknowledged the household consumption improvement as a sustainable achievement of the country in April. However, he noted that it remains the weakest link of China.
On the other hand, stocks in Asia only slightly improved after China's industrial output did. Mainland Chinese stocks such as the Shanghai Composite increased by 0.18 percent, the Shenzhen Composite at 0.558 percent, and the Hong Kong Hang Seng index only gained 0.4 percent.
Japan stocks such as the Nikkei 225 improved by 0.2 percent along with the Topix index that increased by 0.29 percent.
Furthermore, South Korea's Kospi did not move and remained flat. Australia stocks, on the other hand, also slightly improved along with the other Asian stocks. The S&P or ASX 200 was up by 0.86 percent, including shares of major miner BHP also jumped to 3.23 percent. In total, the MSCI Asia ex-Japan index increased by 0.34 percent.
In Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 377.37 points with a higher value of 23,625.34. The S&P 500 was 1.15 percent higher at 2,852, while the Nasdaq Composite was at 0.9 percent higher, ending in 8,943.72.
Last Thursday, major averages were on track for Wall Street stocks' worst weekly performance since March 20. The US dollar index today ended with 100.302 after it reached 100.5 last Thursday.
The Japanese yen, on the other hand, traded at 107.22 per dollar after it weakened at 106.8 on Thursday. The Australian dollar also was at 0.6452 off highs and with a higher value of 0.654 within the week.
