Hong Kong Stocks trade mixed

Headline shares of the Hong Kong market were mixed on Tuesday, 27 November 2018, as concerns about U.S.-China trade tensions overshadowed positive offshore lead. In afternoon trade, the Hang Seng Index declined 24.62 points or 0.09% to 26,351.56. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index rose by 1.59 points or 0.02% to 10,523.12.

Investors are looking ahead to the Group of 20 summit beginning Friday when President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to meet and discuss trade issues. The summit will be watched closely for how relations between both countries develop, in addition to further news surrounding Sino-US trade. China's main goal at the G20 meeting is to get the United States to refrain from raising the tariffs in January.

U.S. President Donald Trump in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that he expected to move ahead with raising tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports to 25 percent from the current 10 percent and repeated his threat to slap tariffs on all remaining imports from China. Trump, who is due to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Argentina this weekend, said that if negotiations were unsuccessful, he would also put tariffs on the rest of Chinese imports.

Many investors remained cautious due to economic uncertainty. China's economic growth is expected to hit 6.6% this year and slow to 6.3% in 2019 as the country struggles with challenges relating to trade and structural reform, economists from Beijing's Renmin University said in a report.

Investors also became cautious after China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that the total profit of software and information technology service industry declined 4.6% in October compared with the same month last year. This marks the first month of a decline in industry profit.

Further, sentiments also muted after a report from the China Iron and Steel Industry Association stated that pressure on the supply side would remain. In October, China's daily output of crude steel averaged 2.66 million tons, a drop of 1.19% from the previous month. The Association said that as winter is usually a slow season, local enterprises need to carefully analyze changes in demand to ensure the steady operation of the market.

OFFSHORE MARKET NEWS: Wall Street stocks closed higher on Monday, rebounding from four consecutive days of losses, as retail shares rallied on expectations of strong sales as shoppers went hunting for deals on Cyber Monday. Stable oil prices and global equities gains also soothed sentiment after a bruising week of losses. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 354.29 points, or 1.5%, to 24,640.24. The broad-based S&P 500 rose 40.89 points, or 1.6%, to 2,673.45, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index rallied 142.87 points, or 2.1%, to 7,081.85. Last week, the Nasdaq tumbled 4.3%, the Dow fell 4.4% and the S&P 500 slid 3.8%, marking the worst Thanksgiving week since 2011 for all three indexes.

The major European markets also rallied on Monday, as investors digested fresh developments surrounding the U.K.'s withdrawal process from the EU. Over the weekend, leaders from the European Union chose to endorse the Brexit withdrawal deal laid out by U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May. The German DAX Index spiked by 1.5%, the U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index surged up by 1.2%, and the French CAC 40 Index jumped by 1%.

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