BANGKOK (AP) — Asian shares were mixed Monday after U.S. stocks rose to records, capping their latest winning week. US futures were also mixed and oil prices rose.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1.5% to 20,869.39, while the Shanghai Composite gained 0.2% to 3,268.11. The smaller Shenzhen market’s A-share index rose 1.6%.
China lowered the one- and five-year Loan Prime Rates, which are benchmark rates for lending. Lower interest rates could help ease pressure on borrowers, especially on property developers who suffered from a crackdown on excessive lending several years ago. But any impact on market sentiment seemed short-lived.
Since the main constraint is weak demand, the “heavy lifting” will have to come from government spending, Zichun Huang of Capital Economics said in a report. China’s finance ministry has pledged to increase such spending in the coming months. “However, we remain skeptical that the fiscal easing will be large enough to achieve anything more than a modest and short-lived rebound in activity.”
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index fell 0.1% lower to 38,954.60, while Seoul’s Kospi rose 0.4% to 2,604.92. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 closed 0.7% higher at 8,344.40.
Oil prices rose after plunging last week as concerns eased that Israel will attack Iranian oil facilities as part of its retaliation for the Iranian missile attack early this month. Iran is a major producer of crude oil, and a strike could boost exports to China and elsewhere. Concerns about the strength of demand from China have also hit oil prices.
Early Monday, U.S. crude rose 52 cents to $69.21 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 41 cents to $73.47 a barrel.
The dollar rose to 149.78 Japanese yen from 149.57 yen late Friday. The yen has weakened recently on expectations that the pace of rate hikes by the Bank of Japan could be slower than previously thought.
The euro fell to $1.0856 from $1.0866 late Friday.
On Friday, Wall Street recorded even more records.
The S&P 500 rose 0.4% to top the all-time high it set early this week, closing at 5,864.67. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.1% to 43,275.91, another record. The Nasdaq index rose 0.6% to 18,489.55.
Trading on Wall Street remained relatively quiet overall, while the S&P 500 posted its sixth straight winning week. That is the longest winning streak of 2024.
Solid economic data has boosted hopes that the U.S. economy can perfectly escape the worst inflation in generations, an inflation that ends without a painful recession that many investors had seen as almost inevitable. And with the Federal Reserve now cutting interest rates to keep the economy going, the expectation among optimists is that stocks could rise even further.
Traders are rallying around the idea that the Federal Reserve will cut its key interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point at its next meeting in November. Expectations were previously high that the Fed would make another half-percentage point cut, but strong updates on the economy have eliminated those expectations. The Federal Funds Rate is currently between 4.75% and 5%.
