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Asian stocks fall after Wall St closes out another winning week
HONG KONG (AP) — Asian stocks mostly fell on Monday after Wall Street closed out another winning week.
US futures were mixed and oil prices fell.
The release of weak data on Chinese loans and news that the US government plans to increase tariffs on a range of Chinese exports weighed on sentiment.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index fell 0.1% to 38,179.46. The country’s economic growth figures for the first quarter are expected to be released on Thursday.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.6% to 19,073.38, helped by buying in technology stocks.
But the Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.1% to 3,142.61 after China’s inflation data rose for a third consecutive month in April, while the producer price index, which measures the cost of industrial goods, fell. for the 19th month, the National Bureau of Statistics released on Saturday.
New loans fell to 730 billion yuan ($100 billion) in April from 3.09 billion yuan in March, and total credit declined in part due to a lower level of government bond issuance. Authorities said data shows demand remains weak, with the real estate sector still struggling.
The Biden administration is expected to announce this week that it will increase tariffs in electric vehicles, semiconductors, solar equipment and medical supplies imported from China, according to people familiar with the plan. Tariffs on electric vehicles, in particular, could quadruple, from 25% to 100%.
These tariffs, which would be announced on Tuesday, generated sales for some automakers. Shares of Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD fell 0.6% and NIO fell 2%.
South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.3% to 2,719.99 and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.1% to 7,743.20.
Taiwan’s Taiex gained 0.7% after leading computer maker TSMC reported that its revenue rose nearly 60% in April from a year earlier. India’s Sensex fell 0.4%.
On Friday, the S&P 500 rose 0.2% to 5,222.68, ending a third straight winning week after a pretty miserable April. Early gains slowed after a discouraging report on US consumer sentiment.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.3% to 39,512.84 and the Nasdaq composite fell 5.40 to 16,340.87.
The S&P 500 is 0.6% off its record high, helped by renewed hopes that the Federal Reserve may cut interest rates this year. A flurry of stronger-than-expected earnings reports from major U.S. companies also helped support the market.
Gen Digital jumped 15.3% after reporting better profits in the first three months of 2024 than analysts expected. The cybersecurity company, whose brands include Norton and LifeLock, also authorized a program to repurchase up to $3 billion of its shares. It joins a growing list of companies announcing major programs of this kind, which help boost earnings per share for investors.
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Novavax nearly doubled and soared 98.7% after announcing a deal with Sanofi that could be worth more than $1.2 billion. The agreement includes a license to co-commercialize Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine worldwide, with some exceptions. Novavax also reported a slightly smaller loss last quarter than analysts expected.
They helped offset an 11% decline in Akamai Technologies, which beat profit expectations but fell short on revenue. The cloud computing, security and content distribution company also presented some financial forecasts for next year that fell short of analysts’ expectations.
In the bond market, Treasury yields rose following the discouraging preliminary report from the University of Michigan.
It suggested that sentiment among US consumers is weakening much more than economists expected, and the drop was large enough to be “statistically significant and brings sentiment to its lowest reading in about six months,” according to with Joanne Hsu, director of the consumer survey. .
Potentially even more discouraging is the fact that US consumers expect inflation of 3.5% next year, up from the previous month’s 3.2% forecast. If these expectations increase, the fear is that this could lead to a vicious cycle that worsens inflation.
It highlights how some companies have recently described growing struggles among their customers, particularly low-income.
In energy trading, US benchmark oil lost 7 cents to $78.19 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international standard, fell 10 cents to $82.69 a barrel.
In currency trading, the US dollar rose to 155.86 Japanese yen from 155.70 yen. The euro cost $1.0774, up from $1.0771.