Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed following Wall Street losses Wednesday, while investors assessed Japan’s trade data and souring business sentiment among large manufacturers.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index jumped as much as 3% before paring gains to 1.86% in its final hour of trade, driven by property, technology and health-care stocks. China’s CSI 300 rose 1.35% to close at 3,456.87.
The Nikkei 225 lost 0.26% to close at 38,262.16 after Japanese manufacturers’ business confidence tumbled to -1 in February, compared with the previous month’s reading of 6, according to the Reuters Tankan poll. That marks the first negative reading since last April.
The data comes less than a week after Japan slid into a technical recession and lost its spot as the third-largest global economy to Germany.
The Reuters monthly poll is considered to be a leading indicator of the Bank of Japan’s official survey.
South Korea’s Kospi shed 0.17% to end at 2,653.31, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 dipped 0.66% to close at 7,608.4.
Overnight in the U.S., all three major indexes ended the trading session in negative territory as Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) led a broader tech decline ahead of the chipmaker’s earnings report
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 64.19 points, or 0.17%, settling at 38,563.80. The S&P 500 slipped 0.6% to end at 4,975.51. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite lost 0.92% to close at 15,630.78.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/21/asia-pacific-markets-japan-tankan-and-trade.html
