Asian stocks stay negative amid broad risk-off

• Asian shares extend previous losses as trade/political catalysts push investors off from riskier assets.
• US-China headlines have been dominating the market risk sentiment while RBA and New Zealand employment data also entertained traders.

With the US-China trade tussle getting bitter, coupled with North Korea’s repeated missile tests, Asian stocks fail to overcome earlier losses and remain in the sea of red heading into Tuesday’s European open.

Despite unearthing the trade war with fresh tariffs on Chinese goods, the US didn’t like the dragon nation’s retaliation and formally termed it as a currency manipulator during early-day. Further, North Korea’s fourth back-to-back missile test in nearly two-week caught global market attention and provided additional push towards risk-safety.

With this, the MSCI’s index of Asia-Pacific shares ex-Japan dropped to lowest since January before recovering to -0.47% by the press time. On the other hand, Japan’s NIKKEI and China’s HANG SENG lose nearly 1.0% at the time of writing.

Australia’s ASX 200 couldn’t benefit from the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) no rate change and are losing more than 2.0% whereas New Zealand’s NZX50 also ignored upbeat employment numbers while marking 1.7% losses.

Moving on, South Korea’s KOSPI also registered a 1.0% fearing North Korean missile-test while India’s SENSEX bucked the trend as it marks a 0.4% gain.

Given the lack of data on the economic calendar, investors will keep an eye over trade/political headlines for fresh direction.