Investors Reacted to the Approval of the Vaccine

Investors are closely monitoring the situation to learn more about the coronavirus vaccine, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to dominate the headlines. It is worth mentioning that, stocks in Asia-Pacific were mixed on Monday, as investors reacted to the information regarding the coronavirus vaccine. 

Interestingly, mainland Chinese stocks strengthened their positions on December 14. The Shanghai Composite added 0.66% to 3,369.12, but the Shenzhen Component gained 1.011% to 13,692.13.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dropped about 0.44% to close at 26,389.52.

Importantly, in Japan, the Nikkei 225 advanced 0.3% to close at 26,732.44. On the other hand, the Topix index gained 0.48% to end its trading day at 1,790.52.

According to the Bank of Japan’s quarterly tankan survey, business sentiment in Japan improved in the three months to December. In fact, the headline index for major manufacturers’ sentiment improved to minus 10 as compared with minus 27 in September.

People should take into account that, Singapore’s Straits Timex Index led gains among the major markets in Southeast Asia as it rose 1.29% to close at 2,858.14.

On Monday, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong made an important announcement. According to this announcement, authorities made the decision to approve Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine, the first shipment set to arrive by the end of this month. Furthermore, other vaccines are also likely to arrive in Singapore in the coming months. As a reminder, the number of cases in the city-state remained low for the past several weeks, with zero or one new case reported in its daily statistics.

Investors and important information

Interestingly, South Korea’s Kospi index declined 0.28% to close at 2,762.20. Unfortunately, the country has to deal with rising numbers of coronavirus infections. For example, on Sunday, the country reported its largest daily caseload ever. This fact underlines the importance of the problem.

Australia’s S&P/ASX200 added 0.26% to end its trading day at 6,620.20. 

It is worth noting that, Hong Kong-listed shares of Alibaba fell 2.63% on Monday. Moreover, the shares of Tencent dropped 2.89%.

Importantly, Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings-backed China Literature were among the companies set to be fined 500,000 yuan each ($76,467) by China’s market regulator. This is due to the companies’ failure to report deals properly for anti-trust reviews.

The coronavirus pandemic remains one of the biggest problems for governmental and private organizations. It is not surprising that investors are monitoring the situation. In addition, it would take time to distribute the vaccine around the world.