Investing.com — Most Asian stocks rose Wednesday, following overnight gains on Wall Street, as soft producer inflation fueled expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates starting in September.
But Chinese shares lagged their peers, with focus shifting to the upcoming earnings of some of the country’s biggest companies due in the coming days.
Regional markets took a positive lead from Wall Street, with US equity benchmarks fully making up for last week’s defeat on positive data.
U.S. stock index futures were flat in Asian trading, with the focus turning to upcoming data from the country for more signals of a September rate cut.
The recovery in Japan is cooling off, other markets are flourishing
In Asia, Japan added 0.4%, down 0.5% as the recovery in Japanese markets now appeared to be cooling.
Data from earlier this week also showed Japan grew as expected in July, raising concerns that a continued rise in inflation would give the Bank of Japan more room to raise rates.
The focus this week is squarely on data for the second quarter, expected on Thursday, after the Japanese economy shrank much more than expected in the first quarter.
Australia added 0.7%, with shares of Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX:) rose about 1% after the country’s largest bank posted a stronger-than-expected annual cash profit and paid a record high dividend.
CBA’s big four banks also rose, largely offsetting a 4% decline in ASX Ltd (ASX:) shares after the exchange operator was charged by Australia’s securities regulator.
South Korea added 0.7%, while local tech stocks showed a sustained recovery against their U.S. counterparts.
Futures for the Indian index pointed to a weak open as a growing row between short seller Hindenburg, India’s securities regulator and conglomerate Adani Group dampened sentiment towards Indian markets. Local stocks were also vulnerable to profit-taking.
Chinese stocks lag behind with big gains and economic data available
The Chinese index and the index fell 0.5% and 0.3% respectively, while the Hong Kong index fell 0.2%.
Investors were awaiting a series of key earnings reports from some of China’s biggest companies, due in the coming days.
Internet giants Tencent Holdings Ltd (HK:) and JD (NASDAQ:.com (HK:) will report their June quarter results on Wednesday, as will utilities CK Infrastructure Holdings Ltd (HK:) and China Resources Power Holding (HK:). 🙂 .
Alibaba.com Group (HK:) (NYSE:), China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd (HK:), CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd (HK:) and Lenovo Group (HK:) will report on Thursday. The main focus will be on whether Chinese companies were able to weather a deterioration in local economic conditions.
In addition to the income, Chinese figures and data are also available this week.
