Asian stock markets have mostly been up, although Japan’s Nikkei has been in a slight decline.
At the time of the review, the Nikkei 225 index was down 0.4 percent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 0.7 percent, Taiwan’s Taiex was up 0.4 percent, and South Korea’s Kospi was up 1.3 percent.
Multidisciplinary company Samsung was up 5.2 percent. According to media reports, Samsung is subject to expectations of a new capital return program, but the company has not published any information on the matter, at least so far.
Semiconductor company that previously told about its share buyback program SK Hynix was up by 3.0 percent. SK Hynix’s program is about a 40 trillion won program (24.6 billion euros).
Online shopping company Alibaba told about the acceleration of cloud service revenue growth and better margins, which has been interpreted as allaying the company’s fears related to artificial intelligence investments. At the time of the review, however, Alibaba’s shares listed in Hong Kong were down 3.2 percent.
“The Asian markets are still held hostage by several unresolved risks,” says of IG International market analyst Fabien Yip According to Bloomberg. The U.S. Treasury’s efforts to buy back more expensive debt “failed to convince investors that it could sustain long-term borrowing costs,” while tensions in the Middle East continue and tech stocks’ bullish drivers diminish, Bloomberg reports.
Oil prices were slightly down: Brent -0.4 percent at around $93 and WTI -0.5 percent at around $86.
In Japan, interest rates on 10- and 30-year government bonds started to rise by a few percentage points.
The dollar continued to weaken slightly. The euro strengthened against the dollar. At the time of review, one euro equaled 1.1694 dollars, 185.87 yen, 0.85698 pounds or 11.068 Swedish kronor.
Cryptocurrency Bitcoin continued to rise.