Investors were keeping their eyes on upcoming earnings reports, as well as potential moves by the world’s central banks, to gauge their next moves
Asian shares were trading mostly down Wednesday after a drop overnight on Wall Street, while Tokyo’s main benchmark momentarily touched another 30-year high.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 added 0.9% in morning trading to 35,935.59. The Nikkei has been hitting new 34-year highs, or the best since February 1990 during the so-called financial “bubble.” Buying focused on semiconductor-related shares, and a cheap yen helped boost exporter issues.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 slid 0.2% to 7,401.30. South Korea’s Kospi shed 1.4% to 2,463.12. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng plunged 2% to 15,550.65. The Shanghai Composite lost 0.6% to 2,877.44.
Investors were keeping their eyes on upcoming earnings reports, as well as potential moves by the world’s central banks, to gauge their next moves.
Wall Street slid in a lacklustre return to trading after a three-day holiday weekend.
The S&P 500 dropped 17.85 points, or 0.4%, to 4,765.98. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 231.86, or 0.6%, to 37,361.12, and the Nasdaq composite dipped 28.41, or 0.2%, to 14,944.35.
Stocks of banks were mixed, meanwhile, as earnings reporting season ramps up for the final three months of 2023. Morgan Stanley slumped 4.2% after it said a legal matter and a special assessment knocked $535 million off its pretax earnings, while Goldman Sachs rose 0.7% after reporting results that topped Wall Street’s forecasts.
Companies across the S&P 500 are likely to report meagre growth in profits for the fourth quarter from a year earlier, if any, if Wall Street analysts’ forecasts are to be believed. Earnings have been under pressure for over a year because of increasing costs amid high inflation.
But optimism is higher for 2024, where analysts are forecasting a strong 11.8% growth in earnings per share for S&P 500 companies, as per FactSet. That, plus expectations for a number of cuts to interest rates by the Fed this year, have helped the S&P 500 rally to 10 winning weeks in the last 11. The index remains within 0.6% of its all-time high set two years ago.