Asia-Pacific set to mostly open lower as two key Wall Street benchmarks fall

Good morning from Singapore, and happy Friday.

Investors are awaiting a slew of data from Japan, including its current account balance for June.

The country’s benchmark Nikkei 225 was set to open higher, with the futures contract in Chicago at 41,285 while its counterpart in Osaka last traded at 41,170, against the index’s Thursday close of 41,059.15.

Futures for Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index stood at 24,876, pointing to a weaker open compared with the HSI’s last close of 25,081.63.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was set to start the day lower with futures tied to the benchmark at 8,757, compared with the index’s last close of 8,831.40.

— Amala Balakrishner

The latest gauge of investor sentiment is rife with uneasiness. Counterintuitively, some market strategists think that could be a bullish sign that forces traders to get back into the market and drive stocks higher.

Bearish individual investor sentiment toward stocks over the next six months rose more than 10 percentage points, the most since February, in the latest weekly survey by the American Association of Individual Investors.

Investor sentiment is viewed by many as a contrarian indicator. The idea is that when investors are bearish, they are more likely to have already sold stocks and have more cash on hand to put to work. And when more are bullish, the reverse is true.

“If the poll is bearish, that is encouraging,” Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research, said in an email to CNBC. “The institutional investor (smart) money tends to look at retail investors as ‘dumb money’ and tends to make near-term price performance projections accordingly.” More here.

— Pia Singh, Scott Schnipper