Introduction

In today’s episode, Weston Nakamura breaks down China’s latest trade data for April, which saw strong but declining export growth, and a surprise contraction in imports - and what this says about the state of the China “re-open” theme, and the broader global demand picture.

Weston also goes through the chronology of another day of speculative frenzy in Chinese financial stocks, which may have hit an intraday reversal today for downside momentum in the immediate.

Weston then discusses the Japanese equity market - which is the one major market that remains resilient against the China-led downside, as the TOPIX Index breaks a new 52-week high, and the Nikkei 225 Index approaches a key resistance level on the back of foreign inflows at massive scale.

Finally, Weston discusses Japan steelmaker JFE Holdings 14% post-earnings rally, as the management's positive outlook on steel demand from the automotive sector, driven by a normalization in the semiconductor chip supply shortage, has potential wide scale implications.