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 rose 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 a 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> jumped 1.94%, led by the utilities, healthcare and financials sectors. Among the top movers on the index were printing company Toppan Holdings, which advanced 7.54%, tech-focused investment firm SoftBank Group<\/a>, which rose 6.89%, and Otsuka Holdings, a pharmaceutical company, which rose 6.84%.<\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n The Topix index rose 0.9%. <\/p>\n Shares of Japanese memory chip maker Kioxia, however, plunged more than 12% after Nikkei reported late Monday<\/a> that U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital was planning to unload about 350 billion yen ($2.24 billion) worth of its shares. The block trade will trim Bain’s combined ownership in Kioxia to 44%, from 51%, the report said.<\/p>\n The Japanese supplier to Apple reported fiscal second-quarter earnings and guidance that missed expectations after the bell on Nov. 13. The company’s shares plummeted 23.03% the next day.<\/p>\n South Korea’s Kospi<\/a> advanced 1.83%, and the small-cap Kosdaq climbed 1.69%. Shares of Lotte Corp \u2014 one of the country’s biggest chaebols, or family-run conglomerates \u2014 sank nearly 10% after it announced on Wednesday plans to spin off and merge its business, Lotte Chemical, with HD Hyundai Chemical.<\/p>\n Lotte Corp was one of the biggest losers on the Kospi index.<\/p>\n Australia’s ASX\/S&P 200 was trading 0.86% higher. The country’s inflation accelerated in October, beating analysts’ estimates and rising at its fastest pace in seven months, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday. <\/p>\n The consumer price index rose 3.8% year on year in October, the fastest pace since adopting a new headline inflation measure in April, according to the official release<\/a>. <\/p>\n Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index<\/a> rose 0.22%, and mainland China’s CSI 300 was up 0.41%. Hong Kong-listed shares of Alibaba Group<\/a> fell 1.27% after its fiscal second-quarter report on Tuesday showed<\/a> adjusted EBITA, a profitability measure closely watched by analysts, fell 78% year on year, dragged by its instant commerce business segment. Revenue topped estimates.<\/p>\n Taiwan’s Taiex index rose 1.4%, with shares of Hon Hai Precision Industry, or Foxconn, climbing more than 2%. The Nvidia supplier said<\/a> Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation had approved a contract amendment providing up to $16 million in additional performance-based tax incentives to Foxconn to help expand its operations in Racine County and invest an additional $569 million. <\/p>\n India’s Nifty 50<\/a> rose 0.33% in early trading, while the BSE Sensex index fell 0.1%. <\/p>\n Shares of Bharti Airtel fell 2.2% after reports that its promoter, Indian Continent Investment, an entity led by billionaire Sunil Mittal, plans to sell 34.3 million of its shares in bulk deals worth at least $806 million.<\/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 Anniek Bao, 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":314319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[47511,22913,8073,116,28,122,8712,88075,7906,8070,9007,7174,112,7173,52516,47513,5103,6990],"class_list":["post-314318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-advantest-corp","tag-alibaba-group-holding-ltd","tag-asia-economy","tag-breaking-news-markets","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-central-banking","tag-cnx-nifty-index","tag-currency-markets","tag-hang-seng-index","tag-interest-rates","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\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}