Losing Streak May Continue For Hong Kong Stock Market

(RTTNews) - Ahead of Friday's holiday for the Dragon Boat Festival, the Hong Kong stock market had finished lower in three straight sessions, slumping more than 900 points or 3.8 percent along the way. The Hang Seng Index now sits just above the 23,920-point plateau and it's likely to see another soft start again on Monday.

The global forecast for the Asian markets is week after Iran closed down the Strait of Hormuz again over the weekend. The European markets were soft and the U.S. bourses were off and the Asian markets also figure to open in the red.

The Hang Seng finished sharply lower on Thursday s the financial shares, property stocks and technology companies ended mostly in the red.

For the day, the index tumbled 387.35 points or 1.59 percent to finish at 23,924.81 after trading between 23,749.99 and 24,163.25.

Among the actives, AIA lost 1.80 percent, while Alibaba Group shed 1.87 percent, Baidu eased 0.45 percent, Bank of China was down 0.94 percent, BOC Hong Kong perked 0.08 percent, China Construction Bank slipped 1.03 percent, China Life Insurance cratered 6.60 percent, China Merchants Bank declined 2.60 percent, China Mobile gave up 0.87 percent, China Petroleum & Chemical contracted 2.59 percent, China Shenhua Energy fell 1.76 percent, CITIC tumbled 3.05 percent, CNOOC dropped 2.01 percent, Hong Kong Exchange slumped 2.24 percent, HSBC collected 0.68 percent, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China retreated 2.70 percent, JD.com sank 1.98 percent, Lenovo Group plummeted 4.42 percent, Meituan crashed 3.49 percent, NetEase weakened 2.56 percent, Nongfu Spring skidded 2.10 percent, PetroChina stumbled 2.79 percent, Ping An Insurance plunged 4.01 percent, Semiconductor Manufacturing advanced 0.99 percent, Sun Hung Kai Properties slid 1.66 percent, Tencent Holdings dipped 1.17 percent, Xiaomi Corporation tanked 3.30 percent, WuXi AppTec surged 5.06 percent and Zijin Mining surrendered 3.08 percent.

The markets on Wall Street were closed on Friday for the Juneteenth holiday, but the European bourses ended mostly under water.

The UK's FTSE 100 ended down 0.35 percent, while Germany's DAX drifted down 0.16 percent and France's CAC 40 lost 0.55percent and Switzerland's SMI edged up 0.06 percent.

The weakness that emerged was due to uncertainty about U.S. and Iran securing a lasting peace truce in the Middle East following the abrupt cancellation of talks between the two nations in Switzerland.

The cancellation happened following exchange of fresh attacks between Israel and Hezbollah, and Iran then accused the U.S. of breaking the agreement - since one of the main conditions was for Israel to also cease hostilities.

Crude oil prices tumbled last week on reports that the Strait of Hormuz was re-opened, falling more than 10 percent from the previous week's close to below $80. But Iran closed the strait again over the weekend, likely prompting a rebound in crude prices this week.