Asian markets on Thursday are set to open on the defensive, with sentiment battered by one of the biggest selloffs of the year in U.S. tech stocks and a renewed spike in longer-dated U.S. Treasury bond yields the day before.
The fog of uncertainty descended further over China's embattled property sector after it was reported on Wednesday that China's largest private lender Country Garden has defaulted on a U.S. dollar bond for the first time. The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield, meanwhile, appears poised to make another attempt on 5.0% after leaping 10 basis points.The global market moves represented a familiar pattern since the flare-up in Middle East violence nearly three weeks ago - higher bond yields, a 'bear steepening' of the U.S. yield curve, a stronger dollar, and higher oil and gold prices.