SINGAPORE — Stocks in Asia-Pacific traded lower on Monday, as the coronavirus situation in parts of North Asia remains serious.
Mainland Chinese stocks were higher, with the Shanghai composite up 0.45% while the Shenzhen component was higher by 0.8%.
China on Monday kept its Loan Prime Rates unchanged, in line with expectations from analysts and traders in a recent Reuters poll. The one-year and five-year LPR were kept at 3.85% and 4.65%, respectively.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng index declined 0.28%. Hong Kong-listed shares of China's largest chipmaker SMIC dropped about 1.7% after the firm was recently added to the U.S. Commerce Department's entity list, limiting its ability to access certain U.S. technology.
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 dipped 0.59% while the Topix index shed 0.66%. South Korea's Kospi was 0.4% lower.
Shares in Australia declined, with the S&P/ASX 200 down 0.27%. The downward moves came as the other states imposed travel restrictions on Sydney, leaving the country's most populous city was isolated from the rest of the nation amid a growing cluster of coronavirus cases, according to Reuters.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan traded 0.2% lower.
The coronavirus situation in parts of North Asia, such as Japan and South Korea, remains severe and could have weighed on investor sentiment.
New coronavirus cases in South Korea hit a fresh record high on Sunday, according to local news agency Yonhap. Over in Japan, the country's capital Tokyo saw its monthly tally of new coronavirus cases topping 10,000 for the first time on Sunday, according to Kyodo News.
Still, there have been positive developments on the coronavirus vaccine front, with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approving Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use. That makes it the second vaccine approved in the U.S., following Pfizer and BioNTech's.
The U.S. Congress also reached a $900 billion coronavirus relief package on Sunday, following months of negotiations.
Oil prices drop
Oil prices fell in the morning of Asia trading hours, with international benchmark Brent crude futures down 3.14% to $50.62 per barrel. U.S. crude futures also dropped about 3% to $47.59 per barrel.
The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was at 90.22 — off a recent slump below the 90 level.
The Japanese yen traded at 103.28 per dollar following levels below 103.2 against the greenback seen last week. The Australian dollar changed hands at $0.7583, having risen from levels below $0.752 last week.
— CNBC's Berkeley Lovelace Jr. contributed to this report.
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December 21, 2020 at 06:38AM
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Asia-Pacific stocks lower; China keeps benchmark lending rate unchanged - CNBC
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