Asian stocks rose for a 12th day, on Friday, leading the regional benchmark gauge to a fourth weekly gain, as Japan’s exporters advanced on a weaker yen before Japanese elections today which are expected to hand power to an opposition party pushing for more central bank easing.
Toyota Motor Corp gained 1.8 percent, as Guoco Group Ltd jumped 31 percent in Hong Kong after the developer received a HK$8.25 billion (US$1 billion) buyout offer. CLP Holdings Ltd (中電控股), Hong Kong’s biggest electricity supplier, fell 2.8 percent after selling shares at a discount.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index advanced 1 percent to 127.44 this week, with the gauge capping its longest streak of daily gains since January 2004. Japanese shares lifted the benchmark on bets former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party will win the election this weekend.
“Investors have a high expectation that if Abe wins the elections, they’ll do more aggressive monetary easing and people expect the yen to weaken,” said Grace Tam, a Hong Kong-based global market strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management Ltd, which oversees about US$1.3 trillion.
Asia’s benchmark equities index rose almost 17 percent from this year’s low on June 4 as central banks from the US, Europe, Japan and China took action to spur economic growth. The gauge traded at 14.4 times average estimated earnings, compared with 13.6 for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and 12.7 times for the STOXX Europe 600 Index, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average advanced 2.2 percent this week, as South Korea’s KOSPI climbed 1.9 percent. Singapore’s Straits Times Index rose 2 percent, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.7 percent and New Zealand’s NZX 50 fell 1.5 percent in Wellington.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index gained 1.9 percent. The Shanghai Composite Index, which tracks the bigger of China’s stock exchanges, added 4.3 percent. Shares on the gauge have rebounded 9.7 percent from a near four-year low reached on Dec. 3. China’s industrial production climbed 10.1 percent in last month while retail sales accelerated by 14.9 percent, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics said.
In Taipei, the TAIEX increased 0.7 percent, or 58.32 points this week to 7,698.77, compared with 7,649.05 on Dec. 7. High-tech firms, in particular the so-called “Apple Inc concept stocks,” led the downside on the local bourse as investors scrambled to lock in profits they had built up in recent sessions, while some old economy stocks appeared resilient, which prevented the index from falling further, dealers said.
The TAIEX opened down 0.44 percent on Friday as investors took cues from the latest Wall Street retreat following a standstill in negotiations between the White House and the US Congress on how to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” dealers said.
Selling escalated to push the index down further at the end of Friday’s session as large-cap electronics encountered heavy downward pressure, they added.
“The fiscal cliff worries weighed on market sentiment at home and abroad, prompting investors to ignore the latest liquidity-easing measures announced by the US central bank,” Hua Nan Securities (華南永昌證券) analyst Henry Miao (苗台生) said. “Now, as investors have sensed that the Fed’s latest fund injection plan has lost its luster, the first thing for them was to pocket the gains they had posted recently, in particular in the electronics sector. The market has been faced with stiff technical resistance ahead of 7,800 points.”
Among the firms in the Apple supply chain, handheld device camera lens supplier Largan Precision Co (大立光) fell 7 percent, the maximum daily decline, to close at NT$784.00, while Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd (鴻海精密), which assembles iPhones and iPads for Apple, shed 4.69 percent to end at NT$91.50.
In other markets on Friday:
Manila fell 1.40 percent, or 80.84 points, from Thursday to close at 5,707.11.
Wellington closed 0.11 percent higher, adding 4.45 points to 3,979.17.
Mumbai went up 0.46 percent, or 87.99 points, at 19,317.25.
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