Chinese People’s Congress Impact Shakes Share Market, AMD Faces Hard Setback in Competition with Nvidia

On Tuesday, the meeting of the Chinese People’s Congress began and its impact was seen on Asian stock markets.

Investors in China have been dealing with a struggling real estate market and weak consumer demand. They were hoping for some relief from the meeting of China’s National People’s Congress, which kicked off on Tuesday.

During the opening session, the Chinese government declared a five percent growth target for the current year. This target was the same as last year’s, when the economy, according to government statistics, experienced a slight overachievement with a growth of 5.2 percent.

However, it seems the market has yet to be convinced by the government’s stance. The CSI 300 index, representative of the mainland China stock market, fluctuated around zero on Tuesday. It had risen slightly by 0.5 percent just before 8 o’clock Finnish time.

On the other hand, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index experienced a significant drop of 2.6 percent, marking the sharpest fall in over a month.

In both Mainland China and Hong Kong, a number of technology sector stocks were on the decline. For instance, online shopping giants like Alibaba and JD.com saw their rates drop nearly four and seven percent respectively at the time of review.

This downward trend in technology stocks also impacted healthcare technology. Alibaba Health Information Technology and JD Health International, both listed in Hong Kong and focusing on the health sector in addition to technology, saw their stocks drop almost seven percent.

Asia’s technology stocks also reacted to Bloomberg’s recent news that Nvidia has not sought to challenge semiconductor company AMD, which has procured the necessary license in the US to sell its processors in the Chinese market.

Despite a 1.3 percent rise on Wall Street on Monday, AMD saw a slight 0.3 percent drop in the aftermarket.

In Japan, the Nikkei index of the Tokyo Stock Exchange managed to reach the 40,000.0 points mark it had broken on Monday, but eventually suffered a minor fall, ending up near yesterday’s level.

Looking at the futures of stock market indices, we can anticipate opening declines in Europe and the United States. The Euro Stoxx 50 index future was down by 0.3 percent after eight, while the London FTSE 100 index future saw a decrease of 0.2 percent.

The futures of Wall Street’s S&P 500 and Dow Jones indices were also down around 0.2 percent. The Nasdaq 100, which has a focus on the technology sector, experienced an even larger drop of 0.4 percent.