China Shares Expected To Open In The Red

(RTTNews) - Ahead of the long Lunar New Year break, the China stock market had ended the four-day winning streak in which it had advanced almost 80 points or 2 percent. The Shanghai Composite Index now sits just above the 4,080-point plateau and it's likely to open to the downside again on Tuesday. The global forecast for the Asian markets is negative due to uncertainty surrounding U.S. tariff policies. The European and U.S. markets were down and the Asian bourses are expected to follow suit. The SCI finished sharply lower on Feb. 13 following losses from the financial shares, property stocks and resource companies. For the day, the index stumbled 51.95 points or 1.26 percent to finish at 4,082.07 after trading between 4,079.77 and 4,123.84. The Shenzhen Composite Index dropped 28.54 points or 1.05 percent to end at 2,680.39. Among the actives, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China dropped 0.97 percent, while Bank of China lost 0.56 percent, Agricultural Bank of China retreated 1.51 percent, China Merchants Bank sank 0.72 percent, Bank of Communications skidded 1.19 percent, China Life Insurance tumbled 1.64 percent, Jiangxi Copper tanked 2.76 percent, Aluminum Corp of China (Chalco) plunged 3.94 percent, Yankuang Energy slumped 0.91 percent, PetroChina plummeted 4.53 percent, China Petroleum and Chemical (Sinopec) crashed 3.48 percent, China Shenhua Energy stumbled 2.61 percent, Gemdale declined 1.49 percent, Poly Developments contracted 1.03 percent, China Vanke climbed 1.02 percent and Huaneng Power was unchanged.

The lead from Wall Street is bleak as the major averages opened lower and remained in the red throughout the session, ending near daily lows.

The Dow plummeted 821.91 points or 1.66 percent to finish at 48,804.06, while the NASDAQ tumbled 258.79 points or 1.13 percent to close at 22,627.27 and the S&P 500 dropped 71.76 points or 1.04 percent to end at 6,837.75.

The sell-off on Wall Street came amid renewed trade uncertainty following the Supreme Court's decision last Friday striking down most of President Donald Trump's sweeping global tariffs.

Meanwhile, the European Commission issued a statement requesting "full clarity" on the steps the U.S. intends to take following the Supreme Court decision.

Negative sentiment was also generated in reaction to a nosedive by shares of IBM Corp. (IBM) after Anthropic's Claude announced COBOL capabilities. COBOL is a programming language used widely in business data processing, which is a core business for IBM.

Crude oil prices sputtered on Monday as demand concerns reappeared following the uncertainty generated by the tariff issues. West Texas Intermediate crude for April delivery slipped $0.10 or 0.15 percent to $66.38 per barrel.