Asian stocks portray the coronavirus carnage, NIKKEI inches closer to -10%

• Equities in Asia fail to recover losses amid the market’s fear of coronavirus.
• Bank of Japan’s latest repo action fails to put a bid in the NIKKEI.
• US equity futures extend losses following a slump in Wall Street.

Shares in Asia follow the footsteps of Wall Street players while tanking amid the initial session on Friday. Portraying this, MSCI’s index of Asia-Pacific shares lose more than 5% to the test the three-year low whereas Japan’s NIKKEI slumps 9.65% to 16,770 by the press time.

Despite global policymakers’ efforts to infuse huge liquidity into the markets, coronavirus fears have been choking the trade sentiment off-late. The deadly virus has recently pushed the BOJ to conduct 500 billion Japanese Yen worth of liquidity infusion after strong measures to ward off the negative implications of the disease by the US, Aussie, European and the UK leaders amid the last few days.

Wall Street marked the sea of red with DJI30 registering the biggest loss since 1987 whereas S&P 500 officially entered into the recession after cutting 20% off its February 2019 high. The US equity futures also remain downbeat as S&P 500 trim 1.5% to 2,433 whereas DJI30 registers 1.76% loss to 20,700 by the time of writing.

It’s worth mentioning that stocks in Australia and New Zealand are down 7.25% and 5.80% respectively whereas those from China near 3.30% during the initial few minutes of the opening. Further, Hong Kong’s HANG SENG drop 6.40% to 22,800 while South Korea’s KOSPI failed to cheer the signals of Bank of Korea, via emergency meeting, as declining to more than 8% by the press time.

Also portraying the risk-off are the US 10-year treasury yields that drop eight basis points (bps) to 0.778% while writing.

The deadly epidemic has recently infected prime-time celebrities from sports and media while levying emergencies in New York. Further, Ohio official estimates more than 100,000 people being infected due to the disease. Also important to note are the actions by the Spanish and Italian regulators that banned some stocks for short-selling as well as no floor trading at the CME.