Live updates on U.S. CPI, China inflation

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell more than 2%, dragged by the consumer cyclicals sector.

Leading the index’s losses is e-commerce giant JD.com, which slumped as much as 12% to its lowest in a year. Chow Tai Fook Jewelry fell 5.19%, and Haidilao lost 4.18%. Automobile company Zhongsheng Group was down 4.94%.

Other index heavyweights are also in the red. Baidu is down 5.17%, while Alibaba and Meituan are lower by 3.44% and 3.89% respectively.

Other stocks dragging down the index include China Merchants Bank which fell 1.27%, while Ping An Insurance  lost 1.67%. HSBC Holdings also dropped 1.42%.

— Lee Ying Shan

JD.com shares tumbled to its lowest in a year, hit by a series of broker downgrades and target price revisions on the prospect of weaker retail growth for the Chinese e-commerce giant.

JD.com shares sank 12.1% to HK$27.83 in early Friday trade in Hong Kong, underperforming the 2.1% loss on the benchmark Hang Seng Index. JD.com’s losses this year have halved its market capitalization from the start of the year.

Morgan Stanley analysts downgraded JD.com to equal-weight from overweight, while Jeffries slashed its price target for JD.com’s Nasdaq listing from $97 to $80 per share.

— Lee Ying Shan

China reported a smaller-than-expected decline in exports in September compared to a year ago, while imports missed, according to customs data released Friday.

Exports fell by 6.2% last month from a year ago, less than Reuters’ forecast of a 7.6% drop. Similarly, imports also fell by 6.2% in U.S.-dollar terms in September compared to a year ago — slightly more than the 6% decline expected by the Reuters poll.

China’s exports have fallen on a year-on-year basis every month this year starting in May. The last positive print for imports on a year-on-year basis was in September last year.

For more, please read this story.

—Evelyn Cheng, Lee Ying Shan

China’s consumer prices came in flat in September, while factory gate prices saw annual declines slow for a third month.

The consumer price index was flat on an annual basis in September, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed. It was below the median estimate for a 0.2% increase in a Reuters poll.

China’s producer price index fell 2.5% from a year earlier, weaker than economists’ expectations for a 2.4% decline.

Tepid prices underscore what China’s top leaders labeled as a “tortuous” economic recovery after the country emerged from its draconian zero Covid curbs toward the end of last year.

— Clement Tan, Lee Ying Shan

Singapore’s central bank kept its monetary policy unchanged for a second straight meeting, maintaining the rate of appreciation of its Singapore dollar nominal effective exchange rate policy band.

The Singapore central bank manages monetary policy through exchange rate settings, rather than interest rates.

It guides the Singapore dollar against an undisclosed basket of currencies of its major trading partners, adjusting the pace of its appreciation or depreciation by tweaking the slope, width and center of the currency band. The Monetary Authority of Singapore does not disclose any detail relating to this band.

Core inflation in the Southeast Asian city-state came in at 3.4% year-on-year for the month of August, easing from July’s figures.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore is expecting core inflation to “step down further to between 2.5% – 3.0% year-on-year by December,” it said in a statement Friday. “Prospects for the Singapore economy are muted in the near term but should improve gradually in H2 2024.”

— Lee Ying Shan