It’s been a tumultuous two weeks for equity traders in Asia. And at some point, it just gets to be too much -- strategists from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to Morgan Stanley have begun slashing their forecasts.
They’ve have had to wrestle with a rapidly escalating trade war between the U.S. and China, a Fed rate hike, the inconclusive Singapore summit between Trump and Kim, and even a series of hacks at South Korean crypto exchanges buffeting digital currencies.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index of stocks resumed its slide Thursday, extending a string of losses over six of the past seven trading days to erase annual gains and approach its lowest level this year.
Here’s a look at the issues facing some of the key markets in the region as investors and analysts inch closer to waving the white flag on 2018.
Asia Pacific
Goldman Sachs is starting to back off its long-time bullish call on Asian stocks, paring its 12-month target for the MSCI Asia Pacific excluding Japan index Thursday to 625 from 640.
U.S.-China trade tensions have escalated against an unfavorable macro backdrop, with global growth slowing amid tighter U.S. monetary policy and a strengthening dollar, strategists led by Timothy Moe wrote in a report dated Thursday.
Goldman’s not quite ready to bail out completely, however -- its target implies gains of about 14 percent from current levels.
Meanwhile, strategists at UBS Group AG see Asian stock markets pricing in a one-in-five chance of a more serious trade war causing an earnings recession. A full-fledged trade war could see stocks in Asia tumble 30 percent from this year’s peak, they said.
Hong Kong
Don’t count on a rebound in Hong Kong stocks any time soon either, according to strategists at Morgan Stanley, who slashed their 12-month target for the Hang Seng Index by about 10 percent this week. The new forecast implies a slump of 18 percent from the gauge’s January peak, nearing the 20 percent correction commonly associated with a bear market.
“The Hang Seng Index is at risk of a further sharp drawdown near term,” Morgan Stanley strategists led by Jonathan Garner wrote in a note Wednesday.