Asian stocks rose for the fourth week in five as US housing starts gained and companies reported earnings that beat estimates, boosting confidence in global growth.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index gained 2.2 percent to 138.83 this week, the biggest weekly gain since last month. The gauge fell last week as China’s inflation rose faster than estimated and the IMF cut growth forecasts for the US and Japan.
“US companies, especially tech stocks, are doing well, and that’s helping to instill confidence,” said Mitsushige Akino, who oversees about US$600 million in assets in Tokyo at Ichiyoshi Investment Management Co. “Investors are looking to take a little bit more risk.”
Stock markets in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka were closed on Friday for holidays.
Taiwan’s TAIEX rose 11.78 points on Friday to end at 8,969.43, capping off a total run of 251.31 points, or 2.9 percent, for the week.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index rose 1.8 percent this week, while Singapore’s Straits Times Index gained 1.3 percent. Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average increased 1 percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index rose 0.5 percent. China’s Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index slid 1.3 percent on concern the government will tighten monetary policy to rein in inflation.
James Hardie Industries SE, the largest seller of home siding in the US, rose 4.2 percent to A$6.20 in Sydney after the US Department of Commerce said housing starts increased 7.2 percent last month from the previous month.
“The economy is in a sustainable recovery,” said Jeffrey Saut, chief investment strategist at Raymond James & Associates in St Petersburg, Florida, who helps manage US$275 billion. “Earnings are going to continue to surprise on the plus side.”
China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd (中國聯通), China’s second-largest mobile phone company, surged 7.5 percent to HK$16.12 in Hong Kong. China’s newly added 3G mobile phone users rose 27.5 percent in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, according to a statement from the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by