China’s third-quarter GDP and key September economic data will be released later today (Friday) as the country’s share markets sell off sharply.
This was before Wall Street sold off again on Thursday with falls of more than 1% for the Dow and S&P 500 and 2% for the tech-heavy Nasdaq.
A slight slowing in China’s quarterly GDP is expected and investors will be watching the monthly and quarterly investment data which is already at or near multi-decade lows.
Any larger than expected shift could impact Chinese share prices during the day.
There are continuing worries about debt (especially by local government and private companies) and the impact of the continuing trade war with Donald Trump.
The data releases will come after Chinese markets stocks fell sharply on Thursday on heavy selling in the energy sector and worries about the levels of borrowing in the stock market added to broader concerns over growth and the global sell-off in equities.
The Shanghai Composite index closed down 2.9% at 2,486.42, after hitting its lowest point since November 2014 on Thursday morning.
The blue-chip CSI300 index lost 2.4%.
So far this year, the Shanghai stock index is down 24.8% and the CSI300 has fallen 24.5%. Shanghai stocks have declined 11.9% this month. Much of the weakness is in tech stocks (as it is in the US, Australia) with giants such as Tencent losing tens of billions of dollars in value. Tencent shares are down more than 30% this year.
