Asia-Pacific markets extend gains; China’s exports miss expectations, imports pick up in July
Customs data from Mainland China showed that imports in July grew faster-than-expected, while exports missed forecasts.
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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 Nikkei 225 ended Wednesday up 1.19% at 35,089.62 while Japan's broad-based Topix gained 2.26% to end at 2,489.21, both building on Tuesday's rebound.
The Nikkei posted its best day since October 2008 on Tuesday, soaring 10.2% after suffering its worst fall since 1987 in the previous session, losing 12.4%.
Japan's heavyweight trading houses extended gains for a second day, with Mitsui up 7.4% on Wednesday. SoftBank Group jumped 5.19%, while Canon led Japanese tech stocks, gaining 9.82%.
Bank of Japan Deputy Governor Uchida Shinichi said that "the Bank needs to maintain monetary easing with the current policy interest rate for the time being, with developments in financial and capital markets at home and abroad being extremely volatile."
Japan's Ministry of Finance disclosed on the same day 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.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was up 1.3% at 16,866.51 as of its final hour of trading. Mainland China's CSI 300 ended the day flat at 3,341.49 after Chinese trade figures were released.
Customs data showed on Wednesday that China's imports in July grew faster-than-expected, while export growth missed forecasts.
Exports in U.S. dollar terms rose by 7% for the month compared to a year ago, missing economists' expectations for a 9.7% increase. The July growth was also slower than June's increase of 8.6%.
Meanwhile, U.S. dollar-denominated imports rose by 7.2%, far more than the economist's forecast of 3.5%. In June, imports had unexpectedly fallen 2.3% amid weak domestic demand.
South Korea's Kospi jumped 1.83% to end the day at 2,568.41, while the small-cap Kosdaq rose 2.14% to end at 748.54.
Samsung Electronics spiked about 3.03% 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 rose 0.25% to 7,699.8.
