SHANGHAI, CHINA – JUNE 08: Aerial view of skyscrapers standing at the Lujiazui Financial District at sunrise on June 8, 2022 in Shanghai, China.<\/p>\n
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images<\/p>\n
Asia-Pacific markets opened higher Wednesday, tracking Wall Street gains on hopes that the U.S. Federal Reserve could cut benchmark interest rates in December.<\/p>\n
Expectations rose after Bloomberg reported that White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett was\u00a0being considered as the frontrunner<\/a>\u00a0to become the next Fed chair. Investors see Hassett as someone more likely to push the central bank toward a lower-rate environment favored by President Donald Trump. <\/p>\n Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent\u00a0told CNBC<\/a> on Tuesday\u00a0that there was a “very good chance” that Trump could name new Fed chair before Christmas. <\/p>\n Markets are pricing in a more than 84% chance that the Fed would cut rates in December, according to the CME FedWatch tool. New York Fed President\u00a0John Williams also said on Friday that there was\u00a0room to lower rates “in the near term.<\/a>“<\/p>\n Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225<\/a> as well as the Topix index rose 0.9%. Japanese tech stocks advanced for a second consecutive session, with semiconductor testing equipment supplier Advantest<\/a> rising 2.5% and Tokyo Electron<\/a> trading 0.61% higher. Lasertec and chipmaker Renesas Electronics rose more than 2% and 1%, respectively. Tech-focused investment company SoftBank Group<\/a> rose 2.5%. <\/p>\n South Korea’s Kospi<\/a> advanced 0.67%, and the small-cap Kosdaq climbed 0.64%.<\/p>\n Australia’s ASX\/S&P 200 was trading 1.2% higher on open.<\/p>\n Futures for Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index<\/a> pointed to a higher open, trading at 25,977, against the index’s previous close of 25,894.55.<\/p>\n Overnight, the key U.S. benchmarks closed higher after a volatile session.<\/p>\n The Dow Jones Industrial Average index advanced 664.18 points, or 1.43%, to close at 47,112.45. The\u00a0S&P 500<\/a>\u00a0gained 0.91% to settle at 6,765.88, while the\u00a0Nasdaq Composite<\/a>\u00a0climbed 0.67% to finish at 23,025.59. That marks a turnaround from the losses seen earlier in the day. <\/p>\n At session lows, the S&P 500 was down about 0.7%, while the Dow and tech-heavy Nasdaq had dropped more than 100 points, or 0.2%, and more than 1%, respectively.<\/p>\n \u2014 CNBC’s Sean Conlon and Pia Singh contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SHANGHAI, CHINA – JUNE 08: Aerial view of skyscrapers standing at the Lujiazui Financial District at sunrise on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4911,3199,941,114,357,7256,7255,3449,85,4486,46,7258,190,3197,16358,92961,2965,2966],"class_list":["post-152975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-advantest-corp","tag-asia-economy","tag-breaking-news-markets","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-central-banking","tag-currency-markets","tag-hang-seng-index","tag-il","tag-interest-rates","tag-israel","tag-kospi-index","tag-markets","tag-nikkei-225-index","tag-softbank-group-corp","tag-tokyo-electron-device-ltd","tag-world-economy","tag-world-markets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}