Asian markets steady as China keeps lending rate unchanged, shrugging off Wall Street losses

Markets in Asia apart from Shanghais were broadly higher Monday, shrugging off the blues on Wall Street after big technology stocks logged their worst week since the COVID crash in 2020.Oil prices fell while US futures advanced.Hong Kongs Hang Seng led the region, gaining 1.8 per cent to 16,516.63.

Markets in Asia apart from Shanghai's were broadly higher Monday, shrugging off the blues on Wall Street after big technology stocks logged their worst week since the COVID crash in 2020.

Oil prices fell while US futures advanced.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng led the region, gaining 1.8 per cent to 16,516.63. But the Shanghai Composite index shed 0.4 per cent to 3,051.76 after the People's Bank of China kept its 1-year and 5-year loan prime rates unchanged.

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 added 1 per cent to 37,438.61 and the yen weakened further. The US dollar rose to 154.76 yen from 154.59 yen, trading at levels not seen since 1990. The Kospi in South Korea jumped 1.3 per cent to 2,626.55. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 surged 0.9 per cent to 7,638.30. On Friday, the S&P 500 dropped 0.9 per cent to close out its third straight losing week. It ended at 4,967.23, which is 5.5 per cent below its record set late last month.

That's its longest such streak since September, before it broke into a romp that sent it to a string of records this year.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.6 per cent to 37,986.40, and the Nasdaq composite fell 2 per cent to 15,282.01.

The market's worst performers included several stocks that had been its biggest stars. Super Micro Computer lost more than a fifth of its value, dropping 23.1 per cent. The company, which sells server and storage systems used in AI and other computing, had soared nearly 227 per cent for the year coming into the day.

Nvidia, another stock that has surged to dizzying heights due to Wall Street's frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology, also gave up some of its big recent gains. It slumped 10 per cent and was the heaviest single weight on the S&P 500, by far, because of its huge size.

Tech stocks in the S&P 500 broadly lost 7.3 per cent this week for their worst performance since March 2020 as some global giants reported discouraging trends. ASML, a Dutch company that's a major supplier to the semiconductor industry, reported weaker-than-expected orders for the start of 2024, for example.

The larger threat was a dawning, dispiriting acknowledgement sweeping Wall Street that interest rates may likely stay high for longer.

Top Fed officials said this week that they could hold interest rates at their high level for a while. That's a letdown for traders after the Fed had signalled earlier that three cuts to interest rates could be possible this year. High rates hurt prices for all kinds of investments. Some of the hardest hit tend to be those seen as the most expensive and which make investors wait the longest for big growth, which can make tech stocks vulnerable. Fed officials are adamant that they want to see additional proof inflation is heading down toward their 2 per cent target before lowering the Fed's main interest rate, which is at its highest level since 2001. Because interest rates look unlikely to offer much help in the near term, companies are under even more pressure to deliver growth in profits. Netflix sank 9.1 per cent despite reporting stronger profits for the latest quarter than expected. Analysts called it a mostly solid performance, but the streaming giant disappointed some investors by saying it will stop giving updates on its subscriber numbers every three months, beginning next year.

Helping to limit the market's losses was American Express, which rose 6.2 per cent. It reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Fifth Third Bancorp rose 5.9 per cent after it likewise topped expectations.

In the oil market, US benchmark crude oil shed 92 cents to USD 81.30 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It gained 12 cents on Friday, to USD 82.22 per barrel.

A barrel of Brent crude gave up 95 cents to USD 86.35 per barrel. On Friday, it pulled back to USD 87.29 after briefly leaping above USD 90 overnight on worries about fighting in the Middle East. Iranian troops fired air defences at a major air base and a nuclear site during an apparent Israeli drone attack, raising worries in the market. But crude prices pared their gains as traders questioned how Iran would respond.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)