Asian markets
Asia stocks fragile as trade anxiety overshadows Huawei reprieve
The Chinese markets, which have endured a volatile few months, started off on a cautious note. The Shanghai Composite Index was last down 0.1%.
The announcement comes as trade tensions between the economic superpowers are rising after the US hiked tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods last week, to which Beijing retaliated.
The IMF maintained its forecast that Asia’s economy will expand by 5.6% this year but cut its projection for next year to 5.4%, down by 0.2 point from April.
The benchmark Nikkei 225, the Hang Seng in Hong Kong and the Shanghai Composite all plummeted more than 3% in early morning trade, as investors fretted about surging interest rates and an ongoing trade war.
The pest - a moth which devours crops in the caterpillar stage of its lifecycle - prefers maize but can feed on some 80 crops, including rice, vegetables, groundnuts and cotton.
Americans have yet to embrace the US stock market with the same fervour as before, holding fewer individual stocks and putting less money into equities overall.
The chance of any easing in geopolitical tensions in the region helped Japan’s Nikkei climb 2.3%. South Korean stocks enjoyed their best day since May with a rise of 1.76%.
Markets fear that a Donald Trump win could cause global economic and trade turmoil.
Most Asian expatriates are either too poor or too tied into African economies to move elsewhere.
The rand has weakened as much as 18 percent against the dollar since mid-December.
The rand slumped to a level of R17.99 against the US dollar on Sunday night after erratic trading.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan slid 1.8 percent to its lowest since late 2011.
China is headed for its slowest economic expansion in 25 years and markets have slumped by 40 percent.
How did the markets in Asia-Pacific fare today?