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StreetAccount Summary - Asian Market Recap: Nikkei (1.21%), Hang Seng (1.72%), Shanghai Composite (1.26%) as of 03:10 ET

Feb 13 ,2026

• Synopsis:

  • Asia equities ended lower Friday. Japan's main benchmarks gapped lower at the open and tailed off again into the close. Hang Seng down but finished off its trough, mainland benchmarks also weak. Steep losses in Australia and Singapore; South Korea's Kospi outperformed on a relative basis, Southeast Asia also lower. Taiwan closed for a holiday. For the week, Japan led despite Friday's dip, notable outperformance in the Kospi, Taiex and Thailand's SET; Indonesia also bounced back. Underperformance in Greater China and India albeit with gains. US futures negative, Europe opened lower. US dollar treading water, yen weaker, other Asia currencies edging down too. Treasury yields higher across tenors, JGB yields lower at the short end. Crude futures lower, precious metals higher with gold back around $5K. Base metals mixed. Cryptocurrencies mixed after bitcoin's overnight selloff.

  • Renewed concerns over the impact of AI hit Wall Street overnight and weighed on Asia stocks Friday with notable declines in several tech-orientated benchmarks. Risk assets also underperformed ahead of the LNY holidays next week with thin volumes Friday exacerbating moves. Friday's negative moves denting an otherwise positive week for Asia equities with several reaching record highs and a few more including the Hang Seng seeing multi-year highs.

  • In developments Friday, China January new home price declines maintained December's pace but y/y prices fell by more. China credit data due later with Reuters consensus looking for surge in January lending due to accelerated bond issuance. Bank of Japan board member Tamura hinted at a rate hike as soon as this spring but a monthly consensus survey showed July was still the most likely month for a hike. Malaysia's Q4 and FY GDP growth both beat expectations on higher-than-expected investment, household spending and exports. Taiwan expected to upgrade its 2026 GDP growth forecast amid export strength later today. Overnight, India CPI inflation rebounded back inside RBI's 2-6% target band for first time since August, partially reflecting updated base year and CPI basket reweighting.

  • SoftBank's (9984.JP) Japan-based payment app PayPay has filed for a US IPO. CNOOC (883.HK) says it will increase wind power capacity by 40% this year as the outlook for oil weakens. China regulators have approved China Shenhua Energy's (1088.HK) plans to acquire CNY133.6B ($19B) worth of assets from its parent China Energy Investment Corp as it moves to deepen its vertical integration. Geely (175.HK) and BYD (1211.HK) are to buy a Mexico-based car plant owned by Nissan and Mercedes-Benz in an attempt to gain a foothold in the North American market. Nissan Motor (7201.JP) saw a deceleration in FY operating losses as turnaround efforts start to appear; shares higher. SK Group (SK Inc, 034730.KS) is to sell its renewable energy assets to KKR and form a joint venture.

• Digest:

  • BOJ rate hike seen most viable in July, 2026 wage hike forecasts progressively improving:

    • JCER monthly consensus survey showed July was most favored among a minority of predictions for the next BOJ rate hike, with 15 out of 34. June saw 10 forecasts, while seven predicted a move in April. Yet rate level projections were evenly split with 18 of 36 looking for no change through June-end and the remainder forecasting a hike, mostly to 1%. Marginal majority 19 expect rates to be 1% at year-end while 14 foresee another hike to 1.25%, indicating unresolved debate over whether BOJ will resume a semi-annual frequency of rate increases. Indeed, this breaks down completely in 2027 when bulk of economists effectively see the rate hike cycle to be over. Another notable development came in 2026 shunto wage hike expectations with wage hike forecasts averaging 5.08%, extending a consistent run of upward revisions every month since polling for 2026 estimates began in Oct-25. While still below 2025 actual growth of 5.52%, direction of revisions stands to further reinforce BOJ confidence that wage hike momentum is solid enough to justify continuation of policy normalization. Elsewhere, Q4 GDP consensus looks for 1.48% q/q annualized growth, upgraded from 1.14% last month, rebounding from a 2.3% contraction in Q3. Growth in private demand (both consumption and capex) expected to combine with positive contribution from external demand.

  • China new home prices extend downward trend:

    • New home prices in China (70 cities surveyed by NBS) fell 0.4% m/m in January based on Reuters calculations of NBS data, the same pace of decline as in two prior months. New home prices fell in 62 cities on m/m basis, up from 58 in December. Prices fell in 65 cities on annual basis, same as in previous two months. Prices in Shanghai and Hangzhou continued to outperform other urban towns with biggest gains. Bloomberg added value of resale homes fell 0.54% m/m from December, smallest decline in eight months. 67 cities saw declines in resale prices on m/m basis while all 70 saw lower resale values from year ago. Slew of supportive policies have been rolled out in recent months, including Beijing city further relaxing buyer restrictions and central government lowering VAT for selling residential properties owned for less than two years. Reuters also reported state-owned companies are buying foreclosed property projects, in sign that long-promised government efforts to optimize supply are finally getting traction. Analysts say move may cushion further home price declines but could also prolong process of property market finding bottom as distressed assets change hands at deep discounts rather than being fully written off.

  • BOJ's Tamura sees good chance of achieving inflation target as early as spring:

    • In a speech, BOJ board member Tamura (a recent dissenter that swung back to consensus in January) largely based his discussions around the published economic projections with no major objections. Recited the outlook view that core inflation will slow to a level below 2% in H1 of FY26 and recover from H2 to a level consistent with the price stability target. However, discussed the evolution of Japan inflation into an endogenous and sticky state as the virtuous wage-price cycle has been maintained. Sees underlying CPI inflation having recently reached about 2% and pointed to the distinct possibility the inflation target can be achieved as early as spring if wage growth is headed for its third straight year in line with the price stability target with a high degree of certainty. Described this element as the final piece of the puzzle in answering the sustainability question. Subsequent section elaborating on wage-setting behavior concluded that this condition seems highly likely to be met. Then moved to a pertinent discussion about the impact of rate changes on economic activity and noted that in his experience as a former banking executive, interest rate function was extremely limited when levels weren't meaningfully high. Correspondingly, he sees impacts from rate hikes in the current cycle to 0.75% have so far been extremely limited. This infers there is still considerable distance to the neutral rate, which means more rate hikes would still leave financial conditions accommodative. As the natural rate component is unobservable, made the case the neutral level can only be implied though, in a conceptual graph illustrating rate impacts on the economy, proposed this is in the vicinity of 1%, above which, effects become meaningful and levels above 2% start to exhibit signs of restriction.

  • Malaysia's economy grows faster than expected in Q4:

    • Malaysia's GDP grew 6.3% in Q4, easily beating expectations, to give FY growth of 5.2% as exports, domestic demand and investment all propelled growth, according to data from Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM). Quarterly growth was fastest pace in three years with Q325 growth also revised higher to 5.4% from 5.2%. Bank said household spending grew from positive labor market conditions, policy support; machinery and equipment in data center spending aided investment growth while electronics shipments led to higher-than-expected exports. Bank said growth momentum expected to remain robust this year on household spending, exports; expects growth between 4.0-4.5% although still has downward risk from persistent concerns over exports. Expects inflation to remain moderate this year, ringgit to be supported by resilient domestic fundamentals. PM Anwar Ibrahim said no time for country to rest, urged government to continue with structural reforms, no time to ease policy discipline (NewStraitsTimes)

  • AI disruption fears enhance appeal of Asian tech hardware giants:

    • AI disruption trade has so far had little spillover to Asia, primarily reflecting more influential concentration of hardware names on tech-heavy benchmarks (Bloomberg). MSCI Asia-Pac index up over 12% year-to-date, contrasting with Nasdaq's ~2% decline, driven by huge gains in region's dominant chipmaking stocks including Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) (+53.5%), SK Hynix (000660.KS) (+37.9%) and TSMC (2330.TT) (+23.6%). their Dominant market positions coupled with demand/supply imbalance affords the three strong pricing power, underpinning positive outlook for revenue with low sensitivity to AI competition concerns playing out in US. Correlation of weekly returns between US and Asian equities recently fell to 0.43, lowest since Jun-2022. Not all parts of Asia have been immune to disruption headlines with India's Nifty IT index down 13% month-to-date to lowest since Apr-2025. Sentiment towards Asia's chipmakers is also dependent to extent on sentiment towards US hyperscalers, evidenced earlier this month when pickup in capex scrutiny translated to significant losses in South Korea and Taiwan.

  • Notable Gainers:

    • +23.8% 475150.KS (SK eternix Co.): SK Group reportedly to sell renewable energy assets to KKR, form joint venture

    • +8.8% 7201.JP (Nissan Motor): reports Q3 results; operating income ¥17.5B vs StreetAccount (¥67.40B); revises guidance

    • +8.6% 4912.JP (Lion Corp.): reports Q4 results; to sell Lion Specialty Chemicals and Ipposha Indonesia to Advantage Partners fund for ¥18.9B

    • +7.9% 285A.JP (Kioxia Holdings): reports Q3 results; guides Q4 non-GAAP operating profit ¥440-530B vs FactSet ¥248.78B

    • +7.0% 2501.JP (Sapporo Holdings): reports FY earnings; operating income ¥24.44B vs FactSet ¥21.80B

    • +2.5% 352820.KS (HYBE Co.): reports Q4 earnings; revenue KRW716.40B vs FactSet KRW707.49B

  • Notable Decliners:

    • -16.2% 3659.JP (NEXON Co.): reports Q4; revenue ¥123.60B vs FactSet ¥138.63B

    • -12.8% 6005.JP (Miura Co.): reports 9M results; cuts FY revenue, operating profit guidance

    • -11.4% 533398.IN (Muthoot Finance): reports standalone Q3 results

    • -10.5% 4755.JP (Rakuten Group): reports Q4 earnings; revenue ¥708.94B vs StreetAccount ¥712.84B

    • -8.9% 9984.JP (SoftBank Group): reports Q3 results

• Data:

  • Economic:

    • China

    • • January new house prices (0.4%) m/m vs (0.4%) in prior month (Reuters)

  • New Zealand

    • Q1 Inflation Expectations +2.4% versus +2.3% in prior quarter

• Markets:

  • Nikkei: (697.87) or (1.21%) to 56941.97

  • Hang Seng: (465.42) or (1.72%) to 26567.12

  • Shanghai Composite: (51.95) or (1.26%) to 4082.07

  • Shenzhen Composite: (28.54) or (1.05%) to 2680.39

  • ASX200: (125.90) or (1.39%) to 8917.60

  • KOSPI: (15.26) or (0.28%) to 5507.01

  • SENSEX: (794.64) or (0.95%) to 82880.28

• Currencies:

  • $-¥: +0.76 or +0.50% to 153.5040

  • $-KRW: +4.09 or +0.28% to 1444.2500

  • A$-$: (0.00) or (0.34%) to 0.7067

  • $-INR: +0.18 or +0.19% to 90.7374

  • $-CNY: +0.01 or +0.11% to 6.9085