Asian stocks fall amid North Korea-U.S. tensions

Asian stocks plummeted on Thursday amid soaring tensions between North Korea and United States. Seoul shares dropped to a 2-month low.

MSCI’s broadest index fell 0.68% cancelling positive gains experienced early in the previous day and also extended Wednesday losses.

Japan’s Nikkei also traded low and Shanghai fell 0.3 percent. Hang Seng (Hong Kong) dropped 1.3 percent. Kospi (South Korea) also followed the same route after it fell 1 percent to hit a new 2-month low.

According to Kota Hirayama, a senior economist at SMBC in Tokyo, “Some investors had wanted reasons to unwind their long positions built up in emerging market equities, and they found an opportunity in the latest bout of Korean tensions,”

“At the moment, it is unclear how the Korean situation will play out and that is hampering the markets. But as past incidents involving the Korean Peninsula have shown, the impact on financial markets tends to fade away over a span of few days”, he continued.

The Greenback resurged to 110.005 after trading as low as 109.560 overnight(it’s weakest run in 8 weeks).

The swiss Franc performed dismally against the dollar where it lost 0.2 percent to trade at 0.9655.This came after a 1 percent surge the previous day.

The dollar index against a basket of major currencies gained 0.1% to 93.620.The greenback also performed well against the Euro. Euro dropped 0.1 percent to trade at $1.1744.

NZD inched down to trade near the one-month low .This was after RBNZ governor commented that he would prefer the local dollar to fall. RBNZ stagnated rates at 1.75 percent on Thursday.

Indices performed equally dismally with three major indices losing as much as 0.52 percent. Dow Jones Industrial Average index fell 0.17%, or 36.64 points, to trade at 22,048.7.

S&P 500 notched down 0.04 percent, or 0.9 points, to trade at 2474.02.Nasdaq fell 0.28 percent, or 18.13, to trade 6,352.33.

Meanwhile, crude oil also lost momentum after an overnight rise hinged on economic data that pointed to declining U.S. inventories. Brent crude dropped 0.05% to trade at $52.68 per barrel.

On the other hand, gold prices were lower than the recent highs. Spot gold dropped 0.1 percent to trade at $1,276.78.This came after having spiked to a 2-month high of $1,278.66.