The city skyline of Lujiazui Shanghai Center in China, on March 13, 2024.
Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images
Asia-Pacific markets rose Wednesday as investors assessed China’s August inflation data.
Consumer prices in the mainland fell 0.4% year over year in August, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics released Wednesday, missing expectations of a 0.2% drop by economists polled by Reuters.
Meanwhile, the producer price index fell 2.9% year over year, in line with expectations and improving from the 3.6% drop in July.
Shares of Asian tech companies in Apple’s supply chain traded higher after it launched new iPhones, Apple Watches and AirPods on Tuesday. Shares of Taiwan-based iPhone maker Foxconn jumped 1.67% and Samsung Electronics increased 1.82%.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 benchmark climbed 0.23%, while the Topix index rose 0.12%.
Over in Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 was 0.13% higher.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index advanced 0.4% in early trade, while the Hang Seng Tech index was up 0.59%.
Hong Kong-listed shares of Alibaba Group continued to rally for a fourth straight session, rising 2.89% to a near-four-year high. This comes after Chinese humanoid startup X Square Robot announced that it has secured around $100 million in a funding round led by Alibaba Cloud.
South Korea’s Kospi index advanced 1.42% to its highest level since the end of 2021. The country’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose slightly to 2.6% in August compared with July’s 2.5%, according to government data. The small-cap Kosdaq rose 0.53%.
Indonesia’s Jakarta Composite Index rose 0.58% in early trading, recovering from its three-session losing streak. The index closed 1.78% lower in the previous session after President Prabowo Subianto unexpectedly dismissed Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati late Monday.
The Indonesian rupiah strengthened 0.21% to 16,435 in early trading, after retreating over 1% in the previous session.
Meanwhile, Singapore’s Straits Times Index jumped 1% to a new record high at 4,341.32.
U.S. equity futures rose slightly in early Asian hours, as traders looked ahead to the release of the latest producer price index Wednesday stateside and the consumer price index data on Thursday, which will offer more insight into the impact of inflation on the economy.
Overnight, all three key benchmarks in the U.S. closed at all-time highs as investors moved past concerns about disappointing jobs data and bet on Federal Reserve rate cuts.
The S&P 500 index settled up 0.27% at 6,512.61, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.37% to end the day at 21,879.49, with the latter hitting a new all-time intraday high as well. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 196.39 points, or 0.43%, at 45,711.34, thanks to a surge in UnitedHealth shares.
— CNBC’s Sean Conlon and Sarah Min contributed to this report.
