Asia-Pacific markets mostly rose Friday, tracking a rally on Wall Street that saw the S&P log gains for a fourth straight day.
The exceptions were Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index, which fell 2.2% in its last hour of trade, and mainland China’s CSI 300, which widened losses to 3.1% to close at 3,865.7.
Investors might be taking a wait-and-see approach while awaiting clarity on U.S.-China tariffs, said Eugene Hsiao, head of China equity strategy at Macquarie Capital, who believed additional stimulus announcements from Beijing may not come until the next parliament meeting in March.
Investors in Asia also assessed Japan’s October consumer price index data. The core inflation, excluding volatile fresh food prices, rose 2.3% from a year ago, slightly above the estimated 2.2%, according to analysts polled by Reuters. That’s cooler than 2.4% in the previous month.
The overall CPI came in at 2.3%, versus 2.5% in September.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 0.68% to close at 38,283.85, while the broad-based Topix rose 0.51% to end at 2,696.53.
South Korean blue-chip Kospi index
added 0.83% to 2,501.24 while small-cap Kosdaq lost 0.54% to finish at 677.01.
Elsewhere, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 eked out gains of 0.85% to close at 8,393.8.
Singapore third-quarter gross domestic product expanded 5.4% from a year ago, notably outpacing the revised 3.0% in the prior quarter. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, the economy grew by 3.2%, accelerating from the 0.5% in the second quarter, according to the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
Singapore also raised its projection of this year’s economic growth to “around 3.5%,” from “2.0 to 3.0%”
Overnight stateside, the three major indexes rose, on track to close the week higher.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 462 points, or 1.06%, to finish at 43,270.35, while the S&P 500 gained 0.53% to close at 5,948.71. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite edged up 0.03% to end at 18,972.42.
Crude oil prices rose more than 2% after Putin confirmed that Russia had fired a hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile into Ukraine and warned that more could follow, the latest in a series of escalations.
source: cnbc.com
