Hong Kong's stock market ended lower Monday with the benchmark Hang Seng Index down 0.76 percent to close at 26,344.14 points.
The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index fell 1.07 percent to end at 9,370.73 points, and the Hang Seng Tech Index fell 0.58 percent to end at 6,257.91 points.
Tokyo stocks rebounded on Monday, as buying by overseas investors, encouraged by gains on Wall Street, drove the rally.
The benchmark Nikkei stock index, the 225-issue Nikkei Stock Average, closed up 447.85 points, or 0.99 percent, at 45,493.66, renewing its record high after a two-day pause.
Timothy Pope, a market analyst, recapped stock markets' performance of Hong Kong and Japan on Monday.
"Hong Kong stocks were under the weather today, quite literally. The markets are looking at a multi-day closure this week as the city prepared to be hit by a massive super-typhoon tomorrow night. Cathay Pacific Airways was down 1 percent after it announced it is expecting to cancel around 500 flights starting tomorrow as Typhoon Ragasa nears. There are conflicting reports at the moment about whether Hong Kong International Airport will remain open or not. But elsewhere on the Hong Kong markets, BYD's listing was down as well - also on the Berkshire Hathaway news. And telecoms provider HKBN sank more than 2 percent by the close after its controlling shareholder China Mobile announced a share sale. This sale is really designed to designed to reduce its stake to the absolute minimum necessary to maintain the listing," Pope reported.
While Hong Kong's market grappled with weather-related disruptions and company-specific challenges, investor sentiment in Japan showed resilience, buoyed in part by recent domestic political shakeup.
"Over in Japan we saw the markets rebound after what was a rather panicky dip on Friday. The Nikkei 225 added 1 percent today.Investors seemed to realize they'd overreacted to the announcement that the Bank of Japan would be starting selling its holdings in Japanese ETFs. This is all part of the BOJ's unwinding of the years of stimulus measures. The initial reaction was a bit of overblown given the projected pace of the sell-down. It's quite slow because central banks don't like to do anything really quickly. Chip stocks today were the biggest gainers -- as they so often are. Advantest and Tokyo Electron contributing the most to the Nikkei's gains," he said.
"There's also a bit of optimism in Japan over the kinds of economic and fiscal policies which might be pursued by the next Prime Minister because we are seeing the leadership race within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) officially underway now, although it's not actually a given that the new leader of the LDP will emerge as the next Prime Minister because the party doesn't command a majority in either house of the Japanese Parliament anymore," said the analyst.
Analyst recaps Asian stock markets' performance on Monday
