Sydney — Asian stocks shuddered lower on Friday after shockingly weak export data from China heightened market fears about a global economic slowdown, a day after European policymakers slashed growth forecasts for the bloc. Beijing reported exports in February tumbled 20.7% from a year earlier, far beneath forecasts of a 4.8% drop and more than erasing January’s surprise jump. Analysts cautioned the timing of the Lunar New Year made it difficult to draw a true signal from the data noise, but the scale of the miss was alarming. Adding insult to injury, China’s leading brokerage Citic Securities issued a rare “sell” rating on the Shanghai-listed shares of People’s Insurance Group of China (PICC) sending them down almost 10%. Shanghai blue chips quickly extended early losses to be down 2.9%, the sharpest daily fall since October, while the dollar climbed on the yuan. Japan’s Nikkei dropped 2.0% and Australia 0.9%. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan skidded 1.2% ...
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