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Investing.com – Asia Pacific stocks were mostly down on Monday morning as the latest U.S. jobs report continued to fuel bets that the U.S. Federal Reserve will begin asset tapering sooner than expected.
China’s Shanghai Composite inched up 0.06% while the Shenzhen Component was down 0.30% by 9:41 PM ET (1:41 AM GMT). Inflation data released earlier in the day said the consumer price index (CPI) rose 1% year-on-year and the producer price index (PPI) rose 9% year-on-year in July.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index inched down 0.08%.
South Korea’s KOSPI edged down 0.14% and in Australia, the ASX 200 was up 0.28%
Japanese markets were closed for a holiday.
Friday’s U.S. jobs report was better than expected, with non-farm payrolls rising by 943,000 and the unemployment rate declining to 5.4% in July.
The benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasury yield rose 1.3% on Friday.
With Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan saying on Friday that he would support beginning asset tapering soon, but in a gradual manner, investors now await comments from Fed officials, including Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic and Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester, throughout the week.
As the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus continues to spread and inflation remains high, investors now await the U.S. CPI, due on Wednesday, to gauge price pressures ahead of the Fed’s Jackson Hole economic symposium later in the month.
“You have these concerns that if the economy is growing very, very strongly then that might bring forward the tightening or the tapering by the Fed,” AMP (OTC:AMLTF) Capital head of investment strategy and chief economist Shane Oliver told Bloomberg.
“There is a good chance they might announce that tapering in September and it would start later this year.”
