Stock Market Today: Asian Stocks Mixed as Wall St Moves Inches Toward Bull Market

BANGKOK — Asian stocks were mixed on Wednesday after a day of listless trading on Wall Street in the absence of market moving data.

China reported that its exports fell 7.5% year-on-year in May and imports fell 4.5%.

The drop in exports was the first year-on-year decline in three months, with export volumes falling below year-on-year levels. And with the worst still to come for many developed economies, we think exports will decline further before bottoming out later this year, Capital Economics’ Julian Evans-Pritchard said in a commentary.

The Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.1% to 3,192.41 while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 0.7% to 19,232.94.

The Nikkei 225 index in Tokyo lost 1.8%, its sharpest drop in 12 weeks, to 31,913.74. Investors sold to lock in recent gains, analysts say.

In Seoul, the Kospi remained virtually unchanged at 2,615.60, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.2% lower to 7,118.00. Stocks rose in Taiwan but fell in Bangkok.

Tuesday, the S&P 500 rose 0.2% to 4,283.85. That’s just 0.2% away from finishing 20% ​​higher than mid-October as a long-predicted recession has yet to hit and excitement around artificial intelligence helped a select group of stocks soar.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose less than 0.1% to 33,573.28, while the Nasdaq index rose 0.4% to 13,276.42.

Gitlab rose 31.2% after the software development platform issued a fiscal year revenue forecast that beat analyst expectations.

Investors are watching for what will happen first: a recession or inflation falling enough to prompt the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, which have risen so high that they have hurt several parts of the economy.

Next week, the US government will publish its latest monthly updates on inflation and the Federal Reserve will meet to discuss interest rate policy. The bet on Wall Street is that the Fed may hold off on raising interest rates, which would be the first time in more than a year to do so, but could resume rate hikes in July.

Some of Tuesday’s strongest moves came in the cryptocurrency world after the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Coinbase with operating its trading platform as an unregistered national stock exchange, broker and clearing house.

Shares of its parent company, Coinbase Global, fell 12.1% after the SEC also accused it of being liable for some of Coinbase’s violations. Other charges focused on Coinbase’s staking-as-a-service program, where users receive payments for their crypto, almost as if they were earning interest from a traditional bank savings account.

Coinbase criticized the SEC’s approach to crypto, saying the solution lies in legislation that allows fair rules for the road to be transparently developed and applied equally, not in lawsuits.

A day earlier, the SEC filed 13 charges against another huge crypto trading platform, Binance, and its founder. Binance said it was in talks to reach a negotiated settlement to resolve the SEC’s investigations.

The frenzy surrounding AI has led a handful of stocks to make huge gains this year, including a 164.5% rise in chipmaker Nvidia. That has contributed to a large portion of SThe profit of &P 500 in 2023, but it has also caused critics to wonder if a bubble is about to form. They also say that the furor around AI may mask the weakness under the S&P 500’s surface.

Even though the S&P 500 is approaching a bull market, nearly as many stocks have fallen as they have risen this year, while concerns remain about declining corporate profits, still high inflation and much higher interest rates than a year ago.

In other trading Wednesday, a U.S. crude fell 49 cents to $71.25 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On Tuesday, it lost 41 cents to $71.74 a barrel. A barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, fell 51 cents to $75.78 a barrel.

Both were near $120 a year ago but have fallen amid concerns about tight fuel needs in the global economy.

The US dollar bought 139.32 Japanese yen against 139.66 yen. The euro fell from $1.0695 to $1.0677.