BANGKOK– Stock prices in Asia rose on Thursday after Wall Street stocks recovered much of their sharp losses from a day earlier.
Oil prices fell.
Benchmarks rose in most major markets except Seoul, while markets in mainland China remained closed for the Lunar New Year holiday.
Japan reported that its economy shrank by 0.4% on an annual basis in the final quarter of 2023, the second quarter in a row that the economy contracted after a 2.9% decline in July-September.
Britain also reported that its economy entered a technical recession in October-December, contracting 0.3% from the previous quarter.
Japan’s nominal GDP last year was $4.2 trillion, or about 591 trillion yen, putting the country behind the US, China and Germany as the world’s fourth-largest economy. Germany previously announced that its GDP in 2023 would reach $4.4 trillion, or $4.5 trillion, depending on the currency conversion.
The persistent weakness further undermined expectations that the Bank of Japan could tighten its ultra-loose monetary policy and raise its benchmark interest rate from its long-standing level of minus 0.1%. Cheap credit is good for markets, with Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 gaining 1.2% to 37,948.35.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index rose 0.6% to 15,971.18.
The Australian S&The P/ASX 200 rose 0.8% to 7,605.70. South Korea’s Kospi lost 0.3% to 2,613.80.
Taiwan’s Taiex rose 3% to a record high at 18,644.57 after TSMC, the world’s largest computer chip maker, reported its January sales rose nearly 8% from a year earlier.
The Indian Sensex rose 0.4%.
Bangkok’s SET edged 0.1% higher.
On Wednesday the S&The P500 rose 1% to 5,000.62, recovering more than two-thirds of its Tuesday loss. A better-than-expected inflation report dented expectations that the Federal Reserve will soon begin cutting interest rates, a key reason why stocks have soared to records recently.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.4% to 38,424.27 a day later, after suffering its biggest loss in almost eleven months. The Nasdaq index rose 1.3% to 15,859.15.
The smallest stocks, which were hardest hit on Tuesday by worries about higher interest rates, bounced back more than the rest of the market. The Russell 2000 index rose 2.4%.
The calm in the bond market ensured that things on Wall Street remained more stable. Treasury yields fell after rising a day earlier on expectations that the Fed would keep rates high for longer. The central bank has already raised its key interest rate to the highest level since 2001 to slow the economy and bring inflation back to target.
Nvidia, which is riding a wave of artificial intelligence technology, rose 2.5% on Wednesday. It was the strongest force that the S&P 500 index.
DaVita rose 8.6% for one of the S&The P 500 posted bigger gains after the healthcare company reported stronger earnings and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
Most companies in the S&The P 500 exceeds analyst forecasts for the last three months of 2023. Hopes for stronger growth in 2024 from a solid economy have been another reason why the S&The P 500 has already set ten records this year.
Shares of Lyft soared 35.1% after a wild ride in after-hours trading, caused in part by a typo in its latest earnings report. The ride-hailing company reported stronger results than analysts expected, but also said in the release that it expects a key measure of profitability to improve by 500 basis points, or 5 percentage points. It was later said that this should have been 50 basis points, or 0.5 percentage points.
Shares of Lyft shot up more than 60% in after-hours trading on Tuesday after the typo.
Rival Uber Technologies rose 14.7% after its board approved a program to buy back up to $7 billion of its shares.
On the losing side, Akamai Technologies fell 8.2% after reporting mixed results.
Online vacation rental booker Airbnb fell 1.7% after reporting it lost $349 million in the fourth quarter due to an income tax settlement with Italy.
In other trading, U.S. benchmark crude fell 20 cents to $76.44 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international standard, lost 18 cents to $81.42 a barrel.
The US dollar fell from 150.46 yen to 150.14 Japanese yen. The euro rose from $1.0731 to $1.0738.
