Asian stocks: Mixed following US aid package, India lockdown

• Asian stocks fail to portray the broad risk-on.
• US policymakers finally agree on a $2 trillion package to combat coronavirus.
• Indian PM announced a three-week complete lockdown while New Zealand declared a national emergency.
• Chinese headlines started arriving positive after the pandemic.

With the US policymakers’ agreement over the much-awaited COVID-19 Bill, the market’s trade sentiment turned positive after the news. The risk-tone earlier cheered the increasing odds of the coronavirus (COVID-19) package’s nearness to an agreement.

Even so, the three-week lockdown in India and downbeat concerns in Indonesia weigh over their respective equity indices while MSCI’s index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan register 2.32% gains by the press time if early Wednesday.

Japan’s NIKKEI portrays the risk-on with a 7.0% hike while Australia’s ASX 200 follows the footsteps with more than 5.0% gains to 5,000. Though, New Zealand’s NZX 50 fails to cheer much amid national emergency in New Zealand while taking rounds to 281, with 1.2% gains, by the time of writing. It’s worth mentioning that virus data from China have been positive so far whereas the government has already started taking steps to overcome the pandemic. As a result, stocks in the dragon nation are mostly positive as we write.

The US 10-year treasury yields register four basis points (bps) of a rise to 0.86% while stock futures seem to recover the early-day gains.

While Bloomberg cites $50 billion help for the US airlines into the aid package, more details of the much-awaited help from the Trump administration, as well as voting on the same, will be awaited for now.