Asian Markets End the Year Mixed

Asian stock markets showed mixed performance in trading from the last week of the year. With Omicron still looming over many countries, investors were listless.

Although the Omicron variant is proving to be less deadly than previous strains, record numbers of cases are causing many countries to contain economic fallout by managing isolation rules rather than installing draconian lockdowns.

The year ended slowly for the broad index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan, which were flat in most recent trading and down 6% on the year overall. Notwithstanding, there was some promising news from South Korea, with a 5.1% boost in industrial output for November, signaling a tapering off of global supply bottlenecks. Chinese stocks lost 6%, led by large drops in tech stocks as Beijing tightened restrictions on the sector. Meanwhile, Japan's Nikkei fell 0.7% on Thursday, resulting in a slight gain of 4.6% for the year. 

There was better news from Taiwan as the country’s market rocketed up by 24% due to surging demand for hard-to-find computer chips.

What does this mean for me?

This news from Asia shows that fears over Omicron left no market unaffected this year. As a stock trader with an eye on the markets, you will have seen that it is not only the popular US and European indices that were susceptible to pandemic news.

As a stock trader, you need to continue to learn how different markets around the world react in diverse ways to globally impactful events.