Asia markets open lower; US presidential debate, OPEC meeting in focus – CNBC

U.S. presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are set to go head-to-head in their first debate on Monday in the U.S. Recent polls have shown the two candidates are neck and neck in their popularity ahead of the November election.

“A ‘good’ performance by Trump could see a rally in safe haven assets, Japanese government bonds/yen, gold, German bunds, and that further yield compression conversely may actually assist long duration ‘riskier’ assets such as emerging markets, high yield bonds and U.S. equities,” Angus Nicholson, a market analyst at brokerage firm IG, forecast in a morning note to clients.

But others said the debate could fall short of expectations.

“We lived through last week with the Fed and the Bank of Japan delivering very little, with a lot of expectations – that could well be what happens with this debate,” Tai Hui, chief Asia market strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday.

“Given that there is a series of debates, they will try to play it safe in the first one rather than to really [have a] go at each other,” he added.

In the currency market, the dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies, last traded at 95.477.

This was compared to levels above 96.00 briefly touched in the previous week before the U.S. Federal Reserve opted to keep its monetary policy unchanged.

The Japanese yen traded at 100.75 against the dollar as of 8:29 a.m. HK/SIN, moving closer to levels near 100.00 it touched late last week. The Australian dollar traded at $ 0.7622 early morning Monday.

In company news, Samsung shares were up 0.51 percent, following reports that the company was delaying the start of new Galaxy Note 7 handset sales in South Korea until October 1.

Reuters reported the company saying the move was needed for speedy completion of the ongoing recall in the country of existing Note 7 smart phones, with only about 200,000 affected customers having turned in their devices.

The new handset, released earlier this year, had come under scrutiny, following multiple reports of fires and damage to the handsets around the world. Earlier this month, Samsung announced a recall of at least 2.5 million Note 7 handsets in 10 markets to replace a faulty battery causing the phones to catch fire, reported Reuters.

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