Mild Upside Seen For Hong Kong Stock Market

(RTTNews) - The Hong Kong stock market has finished lower in consecutive trading days, slumping more than 430 points or 2.1 percent along the way. The Hang Seng Index now sits just above the 19,950-point plateau although it's due for support on Tuesday. The global forecast for the Asian markets is flat to lower amid a lack of catalysts as investors take a wait-and-see attitude. The European markets finished slightly lower and the U.S. bourses were mixed and little changed and the Asian markets also figure to tick lower.

The Hang Seng finished modestly lower on Monday following losses from the financials, oil companies and technology stocks, while the properties were mixed.

For the day, the index lost 115.79 points or 0.58 percent to finish at 19,959.94 after trading between 19,734.68 and 20,146.37. Among the actives, Alibaba Group stumbled 1.19 percent, while Alibaba Health Info surged 4.93 percent, ANTA Sports skidded 1.05 percent, China Life Insurance lost 0.56 percent, China Mengniu Dairy tanked 2.05 percent, China Resources Land surrendered 1.60 percent, CITIC shed 0.72 percent, CNOOC slid 032 percent, Country Garden tumbled 1.96 percent, CSPC Pharmaceutical soared 3.41 percent, Galaxy Entertainment declined 1.56 percent, Hang Lung Properties weakened 0.98 percent, Henderson Land jumped 1.52 percent, Hong Kong & China Gas added 0.59 percent, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China dropped 0.94 percent, JD.com sank 0.93 percent, Lenovo plunged 2.34 percent, Li Ning plummeted 3.64 percent, Meituan eased 0.07 percent, New World Development fell 0.50 percent, Techtronic Industries skidded 0.97 percent, Xiaomi Corporation retreated 1.39 percent and WuXi Biologics slumped 0.99 percent.

The lead from Wall Street offers little clarity as the major averages spent most of Monday hugging the line before finally ending mixed and little changed.

The Dow rose 66.44 points or 0.20 percent to finish at 33,875.40, while the NASDAQ dipped 35.25 points or 0.29 percent to close at 12,037.20 and the S&P 500 rose 3.52 points or 0.09 percent to end at 4,137.04.

The choppy trading on Wall Street came as traders remained reluctant to make significant moves ahead of the release of earnings news from several big-name companies in the coming days.

Tech giants Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), Intel (INTC), Meta Platforms (META) and Microsoft (MSFT) are among a slew of well-known companies due to report their quarterly results this week.

Reports on consumer confidence, new home sales, durable goods orders, first quarter GDP and personal income and spending are likely to attract attention in the coming days.

Crude oil futures settled higher on Monday following reports that OPEC is planning additional supply cuts. West Texas Intermediate Crude oil futures for June ended higher by $0.89 or 1.1 percent at $78.76 a barrel.