Japan’s Nikkei 225 tumbled over 4% Monday, while Australia stocks hit a fresh high ahead of key economic data from China.
The decline was led by losses in real estate stocks, while the largest loser on the index was department store holding company Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings, down 11%.
Japan’s August retail sales climbed 2.8% year on year, beating Reuters poll estimates of a 2.3% rise, and up from a revised 2.7% rise in July. The broad-based Topix saw a smaller loss of 3.13%.
The Japanese yen weakened 0.29% against the dollar, trading at 142.63.
The moves in Japanese markets come as investors digest Shigeru Ishiba’s victory in the Liberal Democratic Party elections last Friday. He will succeed Fumio Kishida as Japan’s prime minister.
Separately, China released its official purchasing managers’ index numbers for September, which came in at 49.8.
While this beat the 49.5 expected by economists polled by Reuters, this marked a fifth straight month of contraction for the manufacturing sector in China.
The Caixin PMI survey, which is a private survey compiled by S&P Global, will also be released Monday.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index jumped 2.33% on its open, while mainland China’s CSI 300 spiked 3.86%.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 climbed 0.62%, breaching its all-time high of 8,246.2.
South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.54%, and the small cap Kosdaq slipped 0.49%
Overnight in the U.S., the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose to a new high on Friday as traders assessed fresh data that showed to more progress on reining in inflation.
The 30-stock Dow added 0.33%, ending at 42,313.00. The S&P 500 ticked down 0.13%, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.39%.
This comes as traders assess encouraging August inflation data, which saw the personal consumption expenditures price index — the Federal Reserve’s favored measure of inflation — increasing 0.1%, matching expectations from economists polled by Dow Jones.
PCE climbed at an annualized pace of 2.2%, below the 2.3% forecast.
—CNBC’s Brian Evans and Pia Singh contributed to this report.
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