Stocks in Australia slipped in Wednesday morning trade on the back of concerns over the state of ongoing U.S.-China trade negotiations, amid reports that the White House had canceled a trade planning meeting with Beijing this week.
The ASX 200 slipped 0.22 percent in early trade as the major sectors traded mixed. The energy sector fell more than 1.4 percent as oil stocks mostly fell on the back of Tuesday’s drop in crude prices. Santos dropped 1.82 percent, Oil Search declined 1.19 percent and Woodside Petroleum fell 0.68 percent.
Meanwhile, futures also pointed to a lower open for the Nikkei 225 in Japan. The Nikkei futures contract in Chicago was at 20,435 while its counterpart in Osaka was at 20,390. The benchmark index last closed at 20,622.91.
The Bank of Japan is scheduled to issue its statement on monetary policy later today, with interest rates expected to be left unchanged.
On Wall Street overnight, the Dow Jones Industrial Average snapped a four-day winning streak as it fell 301.87 points to close at 24,404.48. The S&P 500 shed 1.4 percent to finish its trading day at 2,632.90 while the Nasdaq Composite slipped 1.9 percent to close at 7,020.36.
Stocks stateside dropped to their lows of the day following a Financial Times story which said the U.S. had canceled a trade meeting with Chinese officials. The report was later confirmed by a source familiar with the situation to CNBC’s Kayla Tausche.
White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow, however, denied that report, telling CNBC that “there was never a planned meeting” other than the scheduled visit by Chinese Vice Premier Liu He next week.
The U.S. and China are aiming to strike a deal to break their trade impasse before March 1. The two economic powerhouses have been locked in an ongoing trade war since 2018 which has seen both sides slap billions of dollars worth of tariffs on each other’s goods.
The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was at 96.298 after touching an earlier high of 96.484.
The Japanese yen, widely seen as a safe-haven currency, traded at 109.35 against the greenback after seeing lows above 109.5 in the previous session. The Australian dollar was at $0.7122 after seeing highs above $0.714 yesterday.
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