By Alun John

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Asian shares steadied in early trading on Friday after losses earlier in the week, but China jitters and global growth concerns weighed on investors’ minds, while the dollar sat near a three-week high.

The MSCI’s largest index of Asia-Pacific shares, which is not including Japan, traded flat after its initial losses. However it was down 2.7% for the week.

Hong Kong’s rose 0.5% after posting its lowest close in 10 months the day before, as the saga around China Evergrande Group lurched towards a conclusion, unsettling investors.

On Friday, the shares of this troubled property developer fell another 5%.

Australian shares dropped 1.03% due to a drop in iron ore price, which hurt miners. However, Chinese blue chips eked out a 0.26% rise and edged up 0.42% to head back towards a 31-year high hit on Monday.

U.S. stock options, the, fell 0.6%.

Analyst at IG markets Kyle Rodda said that although the market is “nervous”, he has not seen sentiment change outright bearish.

He said that if you are looking for potential catalysts to justify the next upside move in risk assets and equities, there are none. Global growth worries are keeping investors anxious.

Chinese data released earlier this week showed that China’s growth will slow in 2012, but Reuters polled economists to find out how they feel the U.S. economy rebound was affected by the Delta coronavirus variant.

Although respondents did not expect the Federal Reserve would announce an abrupt reduction in its asset purchase program until November, they indicated that this move was unlikely to provide any support for risk assets.

The U.S. equity market was also impacted by overnight strong U.S. retail data. This reprieve from a string of poor data readings did not help. Sentiment grew, but was offset by dollar gains and pressure on tech stocks that are market leaders.

In Asia, the yield on benchmark was 1.3378% compared with its U.S. close of 1.331%, and the dollar gained 0.04% against a basket of other majors.

The fell 0.18%, the lost 0.16%, but the inched up or 0.13%, supported by Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:) after the strong retail data read.

On Friday, gold recovered slightly with spot prices trading at $1755.03 per anounce. This was 0.2% more than Thursday’s one-month low. The higher yields caused non-interest bearing gold to suffer.

The barrel price dropped 0.22% to $72.45 However, they both fell by 0.26% to $75.53 per barrel. Both are currently hovering below their highs since August.