Asia markets mostly rise

Investors assess Japan inflation, Singapore GDP data

FE Team | Published: November 22, 2024 18:26:11

Asia-Pacific markets mostly rose Friday, tracking a rally on Wall Street that saw the S&P log gains for a fourth straight day, reports CNBC.
The exceptions were Hong Kong's Hang Seng index, which fell 2.2 per cent in its last hour of trade, and mainland China's CSI 300, which widened losses to 3.1 per cent to close at 3,865.7.
Investors might be taking a wait-and-see approach while awaiting clarity on US-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 per cent from a year ago, slightly above the estimated 2.2 per cent, according to analysts polled by Reuters. That's cooler than 2.4 per cent in the previous month.
The overall CPI came in at 2.3 per cent, versus 2.5 per cent in September.
Japan's Nikkei 225 jumped 0.68 per cent to close at 38,283.85, while the broad-based Topix rose 0.51 per cent to end at 2,696.53.
South Korean blue-chip Kospi index added 0.83 per cent to 2,501.24 while small-cap Kosdaq lost 0.54 per cent to finish at 677.01.
Elsewhere, Australia's S&P/ASX 200 eked out gains of 0.85 per cent to close at 8,393.8.
Singapore third-quarter gross domestic product expanded 5.4 per cent from a year ago, notably outpacing the revised 3.0 per cent in the prior quarter. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, the economy grew by 3.2 per cent, accelerating from the 0.5 per cent 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 per cent," from "2.0 to 3.0 per cent"
Meanwhile, Alibaba Group's Hong Kong-listed shares dropped as much as 3.8 per cent on Friday, a day after the company announced plans to merge all of its e-commerce arms, both domestic and international, under a single business unit, overseen by one leader.
The new unit - named Alibaba E-commerce Business Group - will cover domestic brands Taobao and Tmall Group, as well as cross-border businesses such as Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group, according to the company's stock exchange filing on Thursday.