Asian stock market: Mildly bid despite China’s passage of Hong Kong security law

• Asian equities track Wall Street’s gains amid quarter-end consolidation, hopes of further stimulus.
• Beijing passes Hong Kong Security law, gains major criticism from the US and Japan.
• China’s official PMIs flashed upbeat numbers, Japanese data-dump disappointed.
• Fed Chair’s testimony, risk-catalysts will be the keys to watch.

Shares in Asia remain in the positive territory ahead of the European open on Tuesday. In doing so, the market players pay a little heed to China’s recently passed Hong Kong security law while taking clues from US stocks and data. Additionally, the upbeat NBS Manufacturing PMI from Beijing favors the optimists despite likely escalation in the Sino-American tension.

While portraying the market mood, the MSCI index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan prints 0.89% gains and Japan’s Nikkei 225 rises 1.82% to 22,395 as we write. Further, Australia’s ASX cheers the upbeat sentiment the most with over 2.0% profits to 5,938 whereas New Zealand’s NZX 50 also rises around 2.0% by the press time.

Moving on, Chinese indices cheer better than forecast and prior PMIs but their Indian counterpart fades the upside momentum amid the India-China tussle. Furthermore, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng adds 1.0% to take the bids near 24,555 and the upbeat sentiment prevails at South Korea and Philippines as KOSPI and PSEi Composite mark near 1.75% gains by the reporting time.

The US 10-year treasury yields remain sluggish around 0.63% while S&P 500 Futures print mild gains of 0.23% while following Wall Street’s upbeat performance.

Looking forward, traders will have a busy session tracking multiple catalysts ranging from the US-China tension to Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s Testimony. Also likely to add burden on to the analysts will be the heavy dosage of data from the US and UK, coupled with Brexit talks and virus updates. Although the market updates should ideally weigh on the risk-tone sentiment, the quarter-end adjustments might help the buyers remain hopeful.