Currency traders work near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea on Sept 4. (AP)
MANILA, Philippines, Sept 4, (AP): Shares in Asia mostly traded higher Thursday after a rally of technology stocks steadied Wall Street and a slide in the dollar made Asian assets more attractive. US futures were mixed while oil prices were lower. Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 1.2% to 42,437.37 while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 added 0.6% to 8,791.50. South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.2% to 3,192.22. Taiwan climbed 0.7% while India’s BSE Sensex added 0.6%.
The Chinese markets bucked the trend, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index down 1.1% to 25,006.22. The Shanghai Composite index fell nearly 2% to 3,738.32 on fears regulators will intervene amid excessive stock gains and liquidity. On Wednesday, Wall Street steadied after Alphabet and other technology stocks rallied.
It also got some relief from easing pressure from the bond market, where the latest discouraging report on the US job market bolstered expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates soon to support the economy. The S&P 500 climbed 0.5% to break the two-day losing slide it had been on since setting its latest all-time high.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 24 points, or 0.1%, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 1%. Google’s parent company was one of the strongest forces lifting the market and jumped 9.1% after avoiding some of the worst-case scenarios in its antitrust case. Also helping to steady Wall Street was a calming bond market.
A day earlier, yields climbed worldwide on worries about governments’ abilities to repay their growing mountains of debt, as well as concerns that President Donald Trump’s pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut short-term interest rates could lead to higher inflation in the long term. Such worries have pushed investors to demand higher yields before lending money to governments.
And when bonds are paying more in interest, investors feel less need to pay high prices for stocks, which are riskier investments. On Wednesday, Treasury yields retreated following the latest report on the U.S. job market to come in weaker than expected. The 10-year Treasury yield fell to 4.22% from 4.28% late Tuesday, for example. The report showed that U.S. employers were advertising 7.2 million job openings at the end of July, fewer than economists had forecast.