By Gina Lee

Investing.com – Asia Pacific stocks were mostly down on Monday morning, while U.S. futures were down, as bets that the U.S. Federal Reserve will hike interest rates also weighed on bonds.

China’s jumped 1.68% by 9:53 PM ET (2:53 AM GMT) while the rose 1.38%. After the Lunar New Year holiday for a week, Chinese shares returned to trading and reported that they were 51.4 at the end of January.

Hong Kong’s fell 0.88%.

Japan’s fell 1.07% and South Korea’s fell 1.03%.

The Australian dollar was at a record low of 0.46 percent, as it had been released earlier in today.

A strong U.S. employment report is leading to increased expectations about the Fed raising rates by more than fivefold in 2022. In January, they were 467,000 and the was 4%.

The Fed is in a difficult spot, “trying to manage the real economy where we see that hot inflation and the financial economy, which quivers every time we talk about rate rises,” Bain & Co. global head of macro research Karen Harris told Bloomberg.

Now, investors are awaiting U.S. Inflation Data, which includes the due Thursday.

Klaas Knot (ECB Governing Member) stated in Europe that he anticipates a rate hike as early as the fourth quarter 2022. Knot’s comments come after the central bank’s hawkish pivot during the previous week, with President Christine Lagarde no longer excluding a rate hike during the year..

“The momentum trade has been to short bonds, and many are now fearing higher bond yields will really start to bite in equity land,” Pepperstone Financial Pty Ltd. head of research Chris Weston said in a note.

Loretta Mester, President of the Cleveland Fed, will speak Wednesday.

The and will also be releasing their policy decisions this week. These decisions are expected to come on Thursday. Andrew Bailey, the Governor of U.K. Bank of England, will also be speaking on the same day.

Tensions over Ukraine also continue, with U.S. President Joe Biden speaking to his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron about a response to Russia’s troop buildup along its border with Ukraine. Russia has denied plans to attack.

Several companies, including AstraZeneca PLC(LON:), are still in operation. Commonwealth Bank Of Australia (ASX:), GlaxoSmithKline (LON:) Pfizer Inc. Toyota Motor (NYSE 🙂 Corp. Twitter Inc . (NYSE:), Uber Technologies Inc . (NYSE) will publish their earnings over the course of this week.