Asian stocks followed Wall Street higher on Wednesday after US President Donald Trump downplayed his escalating tariff war with Beijing and said a settlement is possible.
Benchmarks in Shanghai, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Sydney advanced as investors mulled the likely costs of US and Chinese tariff hikes on hundreds of billions of dollars of each other’s goods.
The Shanghai Composite Index rose 1.1 per cent to 2,915.35 and Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 added 0.2 per cent to 21,100.80. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng advanced 0.8 per cent to 28,356.30 and Sydney’s S&P-ASX 200 was 0.5 per cent higher at 6,271.20.
Markets in Taiwan, New Zealand and Indonesia also advanced. Singapore retreated, reports AP.
On Wall Street, tech stocks led the way higher Tuesday after suffering a beating the previous day. Qualcomm and Cisco both rose, along with Oracle, Adobe and others. Banks also rose. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and others moved higher.
The benchmark S&P 500 index rose 0.8 per cent to 2,834.41. It recovered nearly a third of Monday’s loss and would now need to rise 3.9 per cent to regain the record it set a couple weeks ago.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.8 per cent to 25,532.05 and the Nasdaq composite index jumped 1.1 per cent to 7,734.49.
Benchmark US crude lost 36 cents to $61.42 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The contract rose 74 cents on Tuesday to close at $61.78. Brent crude, used to price international oils, shed 17 cents per barrel in London. It jumped $1.01 the previous session to $71.24.
The dollar edged up to 109.64 yen from Tuesday’s 109.61 yen. The euro declined to $1.1207 from $1.1208.
