Japanese and Indian stocks have seen one of the biggest declines in Asian markets in recent weeks. In both cases, the fall in the main indices was more than two percent.
Tokyo’s Nikkei stock index lost 2.13 percent of its value on Monday. However, the Indian stock market weakened even more. Indian stocks thus fell to their lowest level in almost four months. Investors have responded to the growing number of cases of coronavirus infection, a variant of omicron, whose share is increasing worldwide. This increases the risk that governments will take strong anti-epidemic measures, thus cooling the economic recovery.
The Hong Kong index Hang Seng also lost less than two percent, the Shanghai Stock Exchange weakened by more than one percent. Here, too, the markets held back because of the omicron. Another factor in the prevailing pessimism on the stock exchanges is the announced tightening of the US Fed’s monetary policy, which set a deadline for the purchase of government bonds and mortgage bonds. The Federal Reserve will stop working with them by the end of March next year, which could cripple the continued growth of stock markets.
