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Asian stocks fell on Wednesday after Wall Street started 2024 with a slump, giving back some of their strong gains from last year.
U.S. futures were lower and oil prices were little changed.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 1% to 16,618.50, impacted by a 2% decline in technology stocks, while the Shanghai Composite Index gained 0.1% to 2,966.13.
Prices of Chinese gaming companies rose, with Tencent Holdings and Netease each gaining over 1%, after local reports that a senior official responsible for overseeing China's gaming industry had been fired following the publication of draft regulations last month had led to a collapse in gaming stocks just days before Christmas.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 slipped 1.4% to 7,523.20. South Korea's benchmark fell 2.3% to 2,607.31 after hovering around a 19-month high on Tuesday amid the short-selling ban.
Bangkok's SET lost less than 0.1% and India's Sensex lost 0.4%.
Japanese markets remained closed for the New Year holidays.
On Tuesday, Wall Street's S&P 500 slipped 0.6% to 4,742.83 after being on the verge of an all-time high earlier in the year.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.1% to 37,715.04 and the Nasdaq composite led the market with a 1.6% decline to 14,765.94.
Some of the market's steeper declines came from stocks that were the biggest winners last year. Apple lost 3.6% on its worst day in nearly five months, and Nvidia and Meta Platforms both fell more than 2%. Tesla, another member of the “Magnificent 7” Big Tech stocks that delivered well over half of Wall Street's returns last year, swung between losses and gains after the company reported shipments and production for the end of 2024 0.1%.
Netherlands-based ASML sank after the Dutch government partially revoked a license to ship some products to customers in China. The United States is pushing for restrictions on exports of chip technology to China. U.S.-listed ASML shares fell 5.3%, and U.S. chip stocks also fell.
Health care stocks held up better after Wall Street analysts raised ratings for some, including a 13.1% rise for Moderna. Amgen's 3.3% rise and UnitedHealth Group's 2.4% rise were two of the biggest forces lifting the Dow.
Investors were bracing for a pause in the big rally that has carried the S&P 500 to nine straight weeks of gains and just 0.6% from its record set almost exactly two years ago. This big increase came on hopes that the Federal Reserve might have engineered a clever way out of high inflation: one in which high interest rates slow the economy enough to cool inflation, but not so much that they cause a painful recession .
A report on Tuesday showed that the U.S. manufacturing industry may be weaker than expected. S&P Global said it contracted more last month than an earlier preliminary reading suggested, as new sales fell due to weakness both abroad and domestically. However, business confidence rose to a three-month high.
A separate report showed construction spending growth slowed slightly more in November than economists had expected.
As with stocks, government bond yields in the bond market also fell slightly on Tuesday after the big moves since the fall. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 3.94% from 3.87% late Friday.
More high-profile economic reports will be released later this week. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve will release minutes from its latest policy meeting, which has raised hopes for a series of interest rate cuts this year.
Another report on Wednesday will show how many job openings U.S. employers posted at the end of November, data that the Federal Reserve tracks closely. On Friday, the US government will release its monthly report on job growth across the country.
In other trading, U.S. benchmark crude lost 2 cents to $70.36 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international standard, lost 4 cents to $75.85 a barrel.
The US dollar rose to 142.11 Japanese yen from 141.99 yen. The euro rose from $1.0936 to $1.0959.
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