Thailand’s SET Index closed at 1,380.23 points, decreased 6.19 points or 0.45% with a trading value of 33.44 billion baht. The analyst stated that the Thai stock market traded narrowly with a low trading volume, as investors awaited inflation figures from the US to assess the direction of the US Fed’s interest rate. The Thai market conformed to the regional market, excluding the Japanese market as it declined from concerns over the possibility that the Bank of Japan could raise its policy rate. The Chinese market surged following the increase of inflation figures, which reflected the recovery of China’s economy.
The analyst expected the market to continue trading narrowly tomorrow.
Japan’s revised official data reported on Monday indicated that the country had avoided a technical recession as its economic growth in the fourth quarter of last year expanded by 0.4%.
Japan’s 4Q23 GDP grew by 0.4% YoY and 0.1% QoQ, beating the provisional data from last month of 0.4% and 0.1% decline, respectively, though the number was weaker than expectations in a Reuters poll of 1.1% and 0.3% growth.
The expansion of Japan’s 4Q23 GDP was supported by a 16.4% rise in capital expenditure in the fourth quarter last year, but the revisions were weaker than estimated as the country’s private consumption remained weak.
Meanwhile, the Bank of Japan was expected to potentially normalize interest rates as early as March 18-19, when the bank held its meeting, while there were also signals for strong wage gains at this year’s Shunto spring wage negotiations.
China is finally giving up on bailing out its property sector as its government body said during the press conference along with the annual parliamentary meeting on Saturday that troubled developers will have to go bankrupt.
According to the translated transcript from the conference, the Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development said that real estate companies that are unable to pay debt or have lost their ability to operate the business, which implies bankruptcy, should go bankrupt in accordance with the law.
The topic of the property sector barely came up during this year’s annual meeting, but details from the parliamentary gathering showed that the government would put manufacturing and domestic technology as its main focus this year. Education came in second and support for consumption came in third.
