Understanding the Market | Hong Kong bank stocks saw an expanded decline in the afternoon, with STANCHART dropping over 5%. Morgan Stanley stated that HSBC and STANCHART are more vulnerable in an economic recession

Hong Kong bank stocks saw an expanded decline in the afternoon. As of the time of writing, Standard Chartered Group fell 5.09% to HKD 86.75; Dah Sing Bank Group dropped 3.99% to HKD 7.46; HSBC Holdings decreased 3.3% to HKD 70.3; and Bank of China Hong Kong fell 2.78% to HKD 28. JP Morgan published a research report indicating that since April 2, HSBC Holdings and Standard Chartered Group's stock prices have adjusted by 16.6% and 20.4% respectively, underperforming the Hang Seng Index by 2.1 and 5.9 percentage points. The bank believes that the market is betting on a global recession, which may lead to deeper interest rate cuts, reduced income for trading banks, and higher credit costs. JP Morgan believes that in the event of a recession in the U.S. and globally, currency center banks like HSBC and Standard Chartered will be more vulnerable than Hong Kong banks and mainland banks. Therefore, it is believed that the two banks will underperform the market in the short term, with Standard Chartered's stock price performance likely to be worse than HSBC's, as the former has a higher reliance on trading bank income and a greater business exposure to economies significantly affected by tariffs. The target prices for HSBC and Standard Chartered are set at HKD 115 and HKD 135 respectively, with both rated as "Overweight."