Bleak global cues butcher Asian equities on week’s first session

Stock markets in Asian region witnessed carnage on the first day of a fresh week with most benchmarks trading with nasty blows of over two percentage points. Sentiments in the session were spooked by terrifying over the weekend cues from US markets where all the major indices suffered brutal butchery and plummeted over two percent on getting discouraging US employment report amid signs of a global economic slowdown. Investors’ mood also got undermined as apart from weak US jobs data, employment report from the Europe too came weak as data showed unemployment in the region was 11 percent in April, the highest level since 1995.

The benchmarks in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all tumbled over two percent in the session amid frightening scenario in Euro-zone, US economic deterioration and sharp slowdown in China. The equity index in China got pounded by about one and half a percent as the nation’s non-manufacturing sector grew at the slowest pace in more than a year and the purchasing managers' index fell to 55.2 in May from 56.1 in April.

Shanghai Composite got pounded by 35.08 points or 1.48% to 2,338.35, Hang Seng Index got butchered by 448.53 points or 2.42% to 18,109.81, Jakarta Composite plummeted 81.17 points or 2.14% to 3,718.60, KLSE Composite plunged 15.43 points or 0.98% to 1,558.16, Nikkei 225 nosedived 169.18 points or 2.00% to 8,271.07, Straits Times Index slumped 36.57 points or 1.33% to 2,709.14, KOSPI Composite Index got decimated by 45.84 points or 2.50% to 1,788.67 and Taiwan Weighted collapsed 189.68 points or 2.67% to 6,916.41.