WORLD NEWS | Asian stocks mixed after weekend calm on bank worries

BANGKOK, March 27 (AP) Asian stocks were mixed on Monday after Wall Street shrugged off a weak start to the previous week to close higher even as worries about banks on both sides of the Atlantic lingered.

Benchmarks in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul and Taiwan slipped after fresh trouble news emerged over the weekend, but rose in Tokyo and Sydney.

Read also | Cryptocurrencies: Black, Hispanic investors struggle with faith in cryptocurrencies

U.S. futures rose, while oil prices were little changed.

Concerns that rising interest rates are squeezing lenders have reignited fears of a recession and added to uncertainty over the policies of the Federal Reserve and other central banks.

Read also | Afghanistan earthquake: 4.2-magnitude quake hits near Farhal district of Takhar province.

On Friday, news about Deutsche Bank’s credit-default swaps was the latest big news to shake markets.

“This weighed on financial stocks as traders looked for any other potential troubles in the global financial system,” Kohle Capital Markets analyst Tim Waterer said in commentary.

Given the recent market rally, “it’s fair to say that traders are putting on a brave face, although there’s no guarantee we’ve seen the last of the banking woes,” he said.

Risks to financial stability have risen as interest rates have been raised to fight inflation, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told a conference in Beijing on Sunday.

Action by central banks and other regulators has helped ease market stress, she said, “but uncertainty is high, underscoring the need for vigilance.”

Chinese stocks fell on Monday after the government reported that industrial profits fell nearly 23% in the first two months of the year from a year earlier.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.5 percent to 19,815.03 and the Shanghai Composite lost 1.1 percent to 3,231.28.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.4 percent to 27,501.60, while Seoul’s Kospi fell 0.3 percent to 2,408.58. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged up 0.2% to 6,969.20, while Mumbai’s Sensex rose 0.4%.

Stocks in Bangkok edged higher.

On Friday, the S&P 500 rose 0.6%, its second straight weekly gain, to close at 3,970.99. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.4 percent to 32,237.53 and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.3 percent to 11,823.96. The Russell 2000 rose 0.9 percent to 1,734.92.

Investors are focusing on how the Federal Reserve and other central banks will handle future interest rates after a spate of recent turmoil in the banking sector.

Shares in Deutsche Bank fell 8.5 percent in Germany on Friday, with shares of other major European banks falling less. Shares and confidence in Swiss lender Credit Suisse, which has had its own unique set of problems, fell sharply earlier this month to the extent that regulators prompted rival UBS to slam it. acquisition.

Earlier this month, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, the second and third largest banks in U.S. history, cast a sharper spotlight on the banking industry as a whole. Investors have focused on smaller banks, which are smaller than “too big to fail” banks and considered riskier.

The pressure on lenders could hamper lending to small and medium-sized enterprises across the country. That in turn could lead to lower hiring, a weaker economy and an increased chance of a recession, which many economists already see as a strong possibility.

Economic reports on Friday were mixed, with orders for durable manufactured goods falling short of economists’ expectations last month, while business activity posted the fastest growth in nearly a year, according to a preliminary report from S&P Global.

In other trading, U.S. benchmark crude rose 2 cents to $69.28 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It fell 70 cents to $69.26 on Friday.

Brent crude, the pricing basis for international trades, fell 3 cents to $74.55 in London.

The dollar rose to 130.64 yen from 130.57 yen. The euro fell to $1.0771 from $1.0774. (Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)