Alibaba And Other Major Stocks Trade Muted In Hong Kong Even As PBOC Cuts Benchmark Lending Rate For 1st Time In 2 Years

Shares of $Alibaba (BABA.US)$ and $Baidu (BIDU.US)$ traded slightly higher in Hong Kong on Monday, while $JD.com (JD.US)$ , $Tencent (TCEHY.US)$ , $Li Auto (LI.US)$ and $XPeng (XPEV.US)$ slumped.

What’s Moving: Shares of Alibaba and Baidu traded about 1% higher each in Hong Kong at the time of writing, while JD.Com, Tencent, Li Auto and Xpeng traded lower, in a range between 1% and 3%. Chinese EV startup $NIO Inc (NIO.US)$ unveiled a mid-size sedan named ET5 at its annual Nio Day event on Saturday. The new vehicle is seen as a competitor to $Tesla (TSLA.US)$ Model 3 sedan, which is the Elon Musk-led company’s best-selling car globally. Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng Index opened lower on Monday and was down almost 1% at the time of writing. The index closed 1.2% lower on Friday amid worries about rising U.S.-China tensions after the U.S. government imposed new sanctions on Chinese tech companies.

Why Is It Moving? The Hang Seng Index extended losses even as the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) cut its benchmark lending rate for the first time in almost two years on Monday.

The one-year loan prime rate (LPR) was reduced from 3.85% to 3.8% as part of the central bank’s efforts to support the Chinese economy, which is struggling from muted consumer spending and a slump in the property sector.

Worries about the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant around the world also weighed on the market.