Stock Market Today: Asian Stocks Mixed After Wall Street Breaks Losing Streak

BANGKOK – Stocks were mixed Tuesday in Asia after U.S. stocks closed higher, with Big Tech stocks recovering some of their recent sharp declines.

US futures fell and oil prices remained little changed.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 closed almost unchanged at 39,594.39.

Chinese markets fell, with the Hang Seng in Hong Kong falling 0.9% to 17,471.79. The Shanghai Composite Index fell 1.7% to 2,915.37.

China’s central bank cut two key interest rates by 10 basis points on Monday, moving to ease credit and stimulate the economy, following a key policymaking meeting of the ruling Communist Party that focused on policy reforms. long term.

The People’s Bank of China also reduced the collateral required under its medium-term line of credit and also reduced the interest rate on its standing line of credit by 10 basis points to 2.7% for its seven-day and 3-day loans. .05% for your one-month loans.

But recent measures have so far not encouraged markets to adopt more ambitious measures in the short term to stimulate faster growth.

“Size matters. And obviously a 10 (basis point) cut is not particularly inspiring. Certainly nowhere near a ‘big’ stimulus, which is arguably what the economy needs,” Mizuho Bank said in a commentary .

South Korea’s Kospi added 0.4% to 2,774.29, while the S&P/ASX 200 jumped 0.5% to 7,971.10.

Taiwan’s Taiex rose 2.8%, while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s biggest computer chip maker, gained 4.3%, recovering from recent losses on renewed optimism about the promise of artificial intelligence.

In Bangkok, the SET fell 1%.

Reports on corporate profits and US economic growth could occupy the market’s attention this week. Analysts expect companies in the S&P500 will post the strongest profit growth in the final quarter since the end of 2021, according to FactSet.

In addition to Alphabet and Tesla, dozens of other major US companies will also release their latest quarterly results next week, including Coca-Cola, Ford and American Airlines.

On Monday, the S&P 500 rose 1.1% to 5,564.41, breaking a three-day losing streak. It was the first gain for the benchmark index since it hit an all-time high on July 16.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.3% to 40,415.44 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.6% to 18,007.57.

Gains were broad-based, with more than three-quarters of stocks in the S&P 500 closing higher, although technology stocks accounted for much of the rally.

Nvidia rose 4.8% and other Big Tech stocks advanced. They stuttered amid criticism that they had become too expensive later rising so high and pushing Wall Street to record highs. Two of them, Alphabet and Tesla, will disclose on Tuesday how much profit they made during the spring in a major test. Alphabet rose 2.3% and Tesla gained 5.1%.

Treasury yields rose mostly in the bond market after President Joe Biden said he will not run for re-election. The move could cause the unwinding of some of the market’s “Trump trades,” which took off after Biden’s poor debate performance last month raised expectations of a victory for former President Donald Trump.

Some airport delays continued on Monday following massive disruptions caused by a global technological disruption which appeared to have been largely resolved over the weekend.

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack and that it has deployed a fix for a faulty update sent to computers running Microsoft Windows.

CrowdStrike shares fell another 13.5% on Monday after suffering an 11.1% drop on Friday.

The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.26% from 4.24% on Friday. Shorter-term yields have remained relatively stable. The two-year yield was unchanged at 4.52%, where it was late Friday.

Other sectors of the market that could have moved sharply due to uncertainty over the November election after Biden withdrew from the race, endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris, were also largely quiet.

The US dollar remained relatively stable, falling to 156.49 Japanese yen on Tuesday morning from 157.04 yen on Monday. The euro fell to $1.0878 from $1.0891.

In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude oil gained 1 cent to $78.41 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Brent crude, the international standard, rose 7 cents to $82.47 per barrel.