Stock market today: Japan’s Nikkei 225 hits new record close, leading Asian shares higher
BANGKOK– Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 rose to a record closing price of 40,913.65 on Thursday, lifting markets across most of Asia.
Stocks in the Chinese market fell, while US futures rose slightly.
Investors around the world are eager for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, which have been at their highest level for two decades, in order to slow growth and curb inflation. And there is growing hope that price pressures will ease enough to make that possible.
The Nikkei 225 rose 0.8% to 40,913.65, with buying of shares of automakers and other export-oriented stocks, helping the benchmark hit a record high.
Shares of Toyota Motor Corp. rose 2% and Honda Motor Co. rose 3%. Nissan Motor Corp. rose 4.5% and shares in computer test equipment maker Advantest Corp. rose 2.1%.
The Nikkei 225’s intraday high was 41,087.75 on March 22. The previous record close was 40,888.43, also on March 22.
Investors have flocked to the Japanese market, partly because of the cheapness of the Japanese yen, which is at a 34-year low against the dollar. A weak yen typically boosts exporters’ profits when they ship back to Japan.
Changes in regulations surrounding investment accounts have also led to an increase in stock purchases.
The Nikkei 225 index has risen 22.4 percent so far this year. The index rose in the late 1980s during Japan’s bubble economy, when asset prices soared. But it crashed when that financial bubble collapsed in the early 1990s after hitting its previous high of 38,915.87.
Elsewhere in Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng recovered from initial losses and rose 0.2% to 18,018.72, while the Shanghai Composite index lost 0.8% to 2,957.57.
Taiwan’s Taiex rose 1.5%, while chipmaker and market leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. gained 2.7%.
In Australia the S&The P/ASX 200 rose 1.2% to 7,831.80, while the Kospi in Seoul rose 1.1% to 2,824.94.
The SET in Bangkok rose 0.9%.
On Wednesday, US stocks continued to rise in a holiday-shortened session after weak reports on the economy kept the door open for possible rate cuts.
US markets are closed on Thursday for Independence Day.
On Wednesday is the S&P500 rose 0.5%, reaching a record high for the second day in a row and the 33rd time this year. It closed at 5,537.02.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.1% to 39,308.00, and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.9% to 18,188.30.
Tesla helped give the market another boost, rising a day after report a milder decline in sales for the spring than analysts feared. It was one of the strongest forces pushing the S&P 500, together with Nvidia. The Darling of Wall Street rush into artificial intelligence technology rose 4.6%, bringing the chip company’s year-to-date gain to 159%.
The action was stronger in the bond market, where U.S. Treasury yields fell after a flood of weaker-than-expected reports on both the labor market and U.S. service companies.
That followed reports earlier that morning about a slowing labor market.
The hope on Wall Street is that the economy will cool just enough to keep the crisis under control. upward pressure on inflationbut not so bad that workers lose their jobs and a recession ensues.
A much more exciting report comes out Friday, when the U.S. government releases a comprehensive look at how many workers employers added to their payrolls in June.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 4.35% from 4.44% late Tuesday, a notable move for the bond market, with much of the drop following the U.S. services report. It has generally fallen since April on hopes that inflation will ease enough to prompt the Federal Reserve to cut its key interest rate from its highest level in more than two decades.
In other trading, U.S. benchmark crude fell 73 cents to $83.15 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Brent crude, the international standard, fell 67 cents to $86.67 a barrel.
The U.S. dollar fell to 161.44 Japanese yen, reflecting expectations that U.S. rate cuts could narrow the interest rate gap with Japan, where the benchmark lending rate is near zero. It was 161.67 late Wednesday.
The euro rose from $1.0787 to $1.0792.