Major Asian stock markets were higher Wednesday after Wall Street rebounded on President Donald Trump’s promise of aid to get the U.S. economy through the coronavirus outbreak.
Chuck money at this, forget about debt, forget about deficits, no one’s actually going to be hauling you to task for keeping to some sort of ridiculous prudent metric of 3% deficit targets or anything like that,” Rob Carnell, regional head of research Asia-Pacific at ING, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday.
“What countries are facing right now is the loss of large chunks of their economic output unless they underwrite that,” Carnell said. “You can end up with coming out of this with a smaller debt but your debt to GDP ratio — because your GDP is halved — will be massive. So, the right thing to do know is to spend a lot of money to target that.”
Asian Stock Markets
- The Shanghai Composite Index rose 1.3% to 2,814.70 and the Nikkei 225 in Tokyo gained 1.9% to 17,342.71. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 0.5% to 23,384.51.
- The Kospi in Seoul gained 0.5% to 1,682.12 in early trading. Australia’s S&P-ASX 200 fell 5% to 5,029.70.
- Market benchmarks in New Zealand and Singapore rose 2% while Manila fell 7.9%, reopening after it was closed on Tuesday. Bangkok surged 2%.
- On Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose to 2,529.10. It still is down 25.3% from last month’s record.
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 5.2% to 21,237.38. A day earlier, the Dow lost nearly 3,000 after Trump said a recession may be on the way.
- Overall, the MSCI Asia ex-Japan index dropped 3.25%.
Currencies
- The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was last at 99.333 after rising from levels around 98 yesterday.
- The Japanese yen traded at 106.97 per dollar following an earlier low of 107.70.
- The Australian dollar was at $0.60 after declining from levels above $0.61 yesterday.
Oil Prices
- Brent crude, the international standard, gained 28 cents to $29.01 per barrel.
