Asian Stock Market: Trades mixed to higher as the market digests US CPI

• Asian equities are mixed, searching for the next directional bias.
• US CPI was in line with expectations but risk assets failed to cheer. 
• Investors are moving away from Asia in search of better alpha trades.

The Asian equity complexes are trading mix in the late hours of the Asian trading session. The ChinaA50 is down about 0.38% and HK50 is down about 0.35% while KOSPI is up about 1.44% and ASX200 is almost flat on the day, at the time of writing. 

The Chinese data released earlier in the day have supported the risk tone, the Industrial Productions for February came in at 2.4% (YoY) vs. 2.7% expected, and the Retail Sales for the same month came in at the expected 3.5% (YoY). 

Earlier in the Asian session, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) released its minutes, which were the same as expected accompanied by a bearish tone and as usual no impact on the market.

The US Consumer Price Index (CPI) data, released on Tuesday prompted a milder risk-on tone among equity complexes, in the wake of smaller Federal Reserve (Fed) rate hike expectations for the March meeting. The sticky part of the inflationary matrix signaled more tightening ahead. Despite that, the market finds some comfort., 

Meanwhile, some report has suggested that many Indian startups and tech companies were linked to Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) fallouts. One might argue that it’s hard to remain isolated in the globalization era. But nothing is officially announced yet.

Moving on to the next, many emerging markets are heavily correlated to the Chinese economy. Since China has lowered its growth forecast, investors are moving away from Asian powerhouses and searching for new destinations for alpha.