A cargo ship is sailing towards the docking of a foreign trade container terminal in Qingdao Port, Shandong province, in Qingdao, China, on June 7, 2024.
Costfoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Asia-Pacific markets extended gains on Wednesday, tracking Wall Street benchmarks that snapped a three-day losing streak overnight.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.76%, while the S&P 500 rose 1.04%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 1.03% to close at 16,366.85.
Sentiment was boosted by a rebound in Japanese stocks Tuesday that saw the Nikkei 225 post its best day since October 2008, soaring 10.2%. On Monday, the index suffered its worst session since 1987 amid recession fears, losing 12.4%.
On Wednesday, the Nikkei rose about 2% while Japan’s broad-based Topix gained over 3% in choppy trading.
Japan’s Ministry of Finance disclosed on Wednesday that it conducted a record single-day yen-buying intervention on April 29, selling 5.92 trillion yen ($40.32 billion) worth of dollars to combat the falling yen. It further sold 3.87 trillion yen worth of dollars on May 1, ministry data showed.Â
Later today, traders in Asia will assess July trade data out of China, with economists expecting exports to grow 9.7% year-over-year compared to June’s 8.6% rise. Imports are expected to grow 3.5% over the same period, a reversal from June’s 2.3% fall.
South Korea’s Kospi rose over 2% while the Kosdaq also gained over 2%.
Samsung Electronics spiked up about 4% after Reuters reported that Samsung’s 8-layer HBM3E chips had cleared tests by American chip major Nvidia for use in its artificial intelligence processors.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.3%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index opened up over 1% in early trading.
—CNBC’s Hakyung Kim and Samantha Subin contributed to this report.
