Lower Open Expected For Hong Kong Stock Market

(RTTNews) - The Hong Kong stock market on Friday wrote a finish to the two-day winning streak in which it had picked up more than 50 points or 0.3 percent. The Hang Seng Index now rests just beneath the 17,420-point plateau and it may extend its losses on Monday.

The global forecast for the Asian markets is negative, with oil and technology shares likely to lead the way lower. The European and U.S. markets were down and the Asian bourses figure to follow that lead.

The Hang Seng finished sharply lower on Friday with damage across the board, especially among the properties and technology stocks.

For the day, the index plunged 360.72 points or 2.03 percent to finish at 17,417.68 after trading between 17,376.23 and 17,629.97.

Among the actives, Alibaba Group slumped 2.64 percent, while Alibaba Health Info weakened 2,65 percent, ANTA Sports declined 2.75 percent, China Life Insurance slipped 1.79 percent, China Mengniu Dairy tanked 4.61 percent, China Resources Land plummeted 5.76 percent, CITIC shed 2.19 percent, CNOOC plunged 4.87 percent, Country Garden surrendered 3.75 percent, CSPC Pharmaceutical eased 1.15 percent, Galaxy Entertainment was down 1.31 percent, Hang Lung Properties lost 2.17 percent, Henderson Land dipped 1.75 percent, Hong Kong & China Gas contracted 1.41 percent, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China dropped 2.52 percent, JD.com retreated 3.30 percent, Lenovo stumbled 3.42 percent, Li Ning sank 2.21 percent, Meituan gave away 1.59 percent, New World Development skidded 2.53 percent, Techtronic Industries fell 2.02 percent, Xiaomi Corporation slid 1.90 percent and WuXi Biologics tumbled 3.74 percent.

The lead from Wall Street is soft as the major averages opened mixed but quickly turned lower and spent the rest of the day solidly in the red.

The Dow tumbled 377.49 points or 0.93 percent to finish at 40,287.53, while the NASDAQ sank 144.28 points or 0.81 percent to end at 17,726.94 and the S&P 500 lost 39.59 points or 0.71 percent to close at 5,505.00.

For the week, the NASDAQ plunged 3.7 percent and the S&P 500 tumbled 2.0 percent, but the Dow rose 0.7 percent.

With concerns about the outlook for tech stocks recently weighing on Wall Street, negative sentiment may have been generated by a major IT outage.

The operations of major banks, media outlets, hospitals and airlines worldwide were affected due to the widespread outage, which was purportedly caused by an update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike (CRWD).

Oil prices fell to a four-week low on Friday amid concerns about the outlook for demand from China and on renewed hopes of a ceasefire in Gaza, while a firm dollar also weighed on oil prices. West Texas Intermediate Crude oil futures for August sank $2.69 or 3.25 percent at $80.13 a barrel, the lowest settlement since June 17.

Closer to home, Hong Kong will see June numbers for consumer prices later today; in May, overall inflation was down 0.2 percent on month and up 1.2 percent on year.