Shares of China’s Largest Chipmaker and the Pentagon

This week, the U.S. Department of Defense added China’s largest chipmaker as well as national offshore oil and gas producer to a blacklist of alleged Chinese military companies. Shares of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) fell on Friday. Let’s have a look at stocks in Asia-Pacific before discussing the shares of this company.

It is worth noting that mainland Chinese stocks saw gains on the day. The Shanghai Composite rose slightly to 3,444.58. In the meantime, the Shenzhen Component added 0.4% to end its trading day 14,026.66.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index ended its trading day 0.4% higher at 26,835.92.

Interestingly, South Korea’s Kospi index led gains among the region’s major markets and jumped 1.31% to close at 2,731.45.

In Japan, the Nikkei 225 fell 0.22% to close at 26,751.24. At the same time, the Topix index ended its trading day slightly higher than at 1,775.94.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 added 0.28% to 6,634.10. According to Australia’s Bureau of Statistics, the country’s retail turnover rose 1.4% month-on-month in October on a seasonally adjusted basis. 

Let’s get back to SMIC and its shares. As stated earlier, the Pentagon added SMIC to a blacklist of alleged Chinese military companies. It is worth mentioning that Hong Kong-listed shares of SMIC fell 5.41% on Friday after an earlier suspension. Also, national offshore oil and gas producer CNOOC suffered losses. Importantly, CNOOC saw its Hong Kong-listed stock fall 3.9%. 

Interestingly, Hong Kong-listed shares of Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com advanced 2.41% on Friday. Several days ago, JD.com’s digital health-care unit, JD Health raised $3.5 billion in a Hong Kong IPO. Moreover, shares of JD Health are expected to begin trading on Thursday. 

Shares of SMIC and other interesting news

As mentioned above, shares of China’s largest chipmaker SMIC fell more than 5% on Friday. However, this was the only important information as investors were also monitoring vaccine developments after a report said Pfizer expects to ship only half of the coronavirus vaccines it originally planned for the year. 

As a reminder, the company was planning to ship 50 million doses in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses by the end of 2021. It is not surprising that investors are closely monitoring the situation as the coronavirus pandemic remains one of the most important challenges. Hopefully, Pfizer and other companies are working hard to gain approval from regulators. However, it could take several months to distribute the coronavirus vaccine around the world.