Stock market today: Asian shares gain after Wall Street ticks higher amid rate-cut hopes
Asian shares have mostly advanced after Wall Street ticked higher amid hopes that Japan's moves to keep interest rates easy for investors could augur similar trends in the rest of the world
Asian shares mostly advanced on Wednesday after Wall Street ticked higher amid hopes that Japan’s moves to keep interest rates easy for investors could augur similar trends in the rest of the world.
U.S. futures rose while oil prices were virtually unchanged after two days of gains.
Building on gains from Tuesday, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index surged 1.4% to reach 33,675.94 despite Japan experiencing a slight decline in its export performance for the first time in three months in November, a worrisome slowdown for the world's third-largest economy.
Exports to China, Japan's biggest single market, fell 2.2%, while shipments to the U.S. rose 5.3% from a year earlier. Total imports fell nearly 12%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index added 0.7% to 16,613.79 while the Shanghai Composite index lost 0.8% to 2,909.26 after China kept its benchmark lending rates unchanged at the monthly fixing on Wednesday.
The S&P/ASX 200 in Sydney gained 0.7% to 7,537.90, while South Korea’s Kospi was 1.8% higher to 2,613.44. Bangkok’s SET rose 0.5%, and India’s Sensex climbed 0.3%.
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose 0.6% to 4,768.37, just 0.6% shy of its record set nearly two years ago. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.7% to 37,557.92, setting a record for a fifth straight day, while the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.7% to 15,003.22.
Enphase Energy jumped 9.1% for the biggest gain in the S&P 500 after the maker of microinverters for the solar industry told employees it will cut 10% of its global workforce and make other streamlining changes. Stocks of oil-and-gas
Read more on abcnews.go.com
