Published Oct 24, 2018 12:47AM ET
China Just Saved Asia Stocks From Entering Bear-Market Territory
(Bloomberg) -- It’s been a day of swings between losses and gains for Asian stocks. But now that China and Hong Kong are back with a vengeance, the regional benchmark is inching higher in the green.
Asia’s main equity gauge, which was poised to succumb to bear market territory earlier, is now up 0.3 percent as of 12:45 p.m. in Singapore as the indexes for China and Hong Kong rallied by the mid-day trading break. Even U.S. stock-index futures have flipped into a slightly higher region.
It’s worth noting that Chinese stocks might be in a bit of a “one step forward, two steps back” mode as the market holds on to its title of world’s wildest market. While there have been some days of solid rallies over the past couple of months, the Shanghai Composite Index is still down about 20 percent since the end of December. The only caveat is that China’s national team might just be waking up to heavier support for the rest of the year.
First a recap on what happened overnight:
Where to from here? Earnings season will be key. All eyes will be on U.S. tech stocks this week as companies including Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN)., Google’s Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc., Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR). and Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT). are scheduled to report this week.
Everywhere else in Asia, stock markets are seeing modest gains. In India, the S&P BSE Sensex climbed, propelled by the steepest oil drop in three months. Japan’s Topix index fluctuated as explorers of crude slid and electronics stocks rose. Japan investors may be waiting for earnings to kick into full gear -- the ratio of short bets on shares traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange climbed to a record of 50.8 percent as the Topix closed on Tuesday at its lowest level since September 2017.
Here are some other notable moves today:
Stock-Market Summary
Written By: Bloomberg
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