Asian stocks yesterday rose as expectations of the US Federal Reserve hiking interest rates this year faded after weaker-than-expected employment data.
Spread betters forecast a higher open for Britain’s FTSE, Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC as investors slowly return to riskier assets.
US stock indices jumped more than 1 percent on Friday as worries about the economy after the disappointing jobs report gave way to a robust rally in energy and materials stocks.
Taking a lead from Friday’s Wall Street gains, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose to a two-week high and was up 1.7 percent.
Australian shares rallied 1.9 percent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 1.8 percent and South Korea’s KOSPI rose 0.5 percent.
“Risk aversion weakened today, as the weak US employment data supported expectations that the Fed would put off the timing of rate hikes,” Seoul-based SK Securities stock analyst Kim Young-jun said.
Tokyo’s Nikkei climbed 1.8 percent, while Chinese financial markets are closed until Thursday for national holidays.
US nonfarm payrolls rose by 142,000 last month, considerably lower than the 203,000 jobs the markets had expected, data showed on Friday.
The lackluster jobs report, which also showed a stall in US hourly wage growth, fueled doubts that the economy was robust enough to withstand a rate hike before year-end.
The possibility of the Fed delaying the lift-off date for rates also meant its loose policy, which has helped shore up riskier assets globally by providing cheap cash, would continue a little longer.
The Dow and S&P 500 both gained more than 1 percent on Friday after initially shedding more than 1.5 percent.
“The print will completely rule out this month for a rate rise in the US and will put the December meeting in doubt. The market reactions to the nonfarm payrolls are unmistakable — they see it as a trend and have recycled the 2012 to 2014 adage of ‘bad news is good news,’” IG Group PLC market strategist Evan Lucas said in Melbourne.
Prices of safe-haven government bonds gained on the downbeat US jobs data, sending benchmark 10-year US Treasury yields to near six-week lows on Friday. German Bund yields dropped to four-month troughs and the 30-year Japanese government bond yield slid to its lowest since late April.
In currencies, the greenback was on the defensive, with the dollar index nudged down 0.1 percent to 95.762 after losing 0.4 percent overnight.
The US dollar was little changed at ¥120.
The euro rose 0.2 percent against the greenback to US$1.1235 after climbing to as high as US$1.1319 on Friday, a 10-day peak.
“In the near term, the greenback may be expected to remain partially on the defensive post-NFP [nonfarm payrolls],” strategists at OCBC Bank wrote.
“Instead of interpreting the disappointing US NFP numbers as symptomatic of the state of the global economy, investors have instead chosen to look upon the glass as half full, attaching positivity to prospects of a delayed Fed lift-off,” they added.
Crude oil prices yesterday edged up after Russia said it was prepared to meet other producers to discuss the situation in the global oil market.
US crude futures rose 0.6 percent to US$45.82 per barrel. They surged 1.8 percent on Friday on a report of a continuing decline in the US oil rig count.
Brent crude climbed 0.5 percent to US$48.36 per barrel after it finished nearly 1 percent higher on Friday.
Gold stood tall after surging 2.2 percent on Friday as the weak US jobs data dented rate hike hopes and worked against the dollar. Spot gold was nearly flat at US$1,135.71 per ounce.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained