Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed on Thursday after a soft inflation report in the U.S. helped two of the three benchmarks on Wall Street reverse course from two days of losses.
The consumer price index — a broad-based measure of costs across the U.S. economy — increased 0.2% month-on-month in February, putting the annual inflation rate at 2.8%.
The latest reading “is welcome relief,” said Vishnu Varathan, Mizhuo Bank’s head of macro research in Asia excluding Japan.
“Crucially, February’s inflation will almost certainly not entail any tariff impact, which means that the relief, while welcome, is redemption for Fed [U.S. Federal Reserve] hawks concerned about price shocks piling on,” he explained in a Thursday note.
Looking ahead, Varathan said it is “premature for the Fed to let its guard down at this juncture.”
Over in Japan, the benchmark Nikkei 225 was flat, while the broader Topix index edged up 0.18% in its last hour of trade.
Shares of Seven & i Holdings gained as much as 3.60%, as Canadian convenience store operator Alimentation Couche-Tard kicked off its press conference on buying the 7-Eleven operator.
Couche-Tard, which owns the Circle-K convenience store chain, has been pursuing Seven & i for months and put in a $47 billion bid for the Japanese retail giant. This would be Japan’s largest-ever foreign buyout if the deal is completed. However, Couche-Tard has so far mostly received frosty reception from Seven & i.
Couche-Tard founder and Executive Chairman Alain Bouchard said the company has had “many discussions” with Seven & i’s new CEO Stephen Dacus, “but it has always stopped at the regulatory ask, the thing that we cannot overcome.”
South Korea’s Kospi index fell 0.48% while the small-cap Kosdaq fell 0.69%, reversing course from gains earlier in the session.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dipped 1.20% while mainland China’s CSI 300 fell 0.54% in choppy trade.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 ended the day 0.48% lower at 7,749.10. This is the third consecutive day that the index is ending in negative territory.
Investors are watching Indian stocks closely after the South Asia giant’s inflation rate cooled to a lower-than-expected 3.61% in February as vegetable prices edged down.
Nomura economists Sonal Varma and Aurodeep Nandi note that the latest reading “supports higher Q4 FY25 GDP growth, but the magnitude is still unclear.”
Going forward, they “expect benign inflation readings to sustain.” They also added that headline inflation should rise to around 3.8% year-on-year in March, while subdued demand, higher crop output and low manufacturing costs is likely to keep CPI inflation below 4% in the first quarter of 2025, they wrote in a Thursday note.
India’s benchmark Nifty 50 was up 0.15% in early trade, while the BSE Sensex was 0.16% higher.
Overnight in the U.S., the Nasdaq Composite picked up after the soft inflation report eased concerns about a looming recession and as investors snapped up technology shares.
The tech-heavy benchmark added 1.22% and closed at 17,648.45, while the S&P 500 gained 0.49% to end at 5,599.30. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 82.55 points, or 0.2%, to settle at 41,350.93.
The tech sector is off more than 3% week to date, but bounced back in the session to lead gains In the S&P 500. Top performers include Nvidia, which gained 6.4%, and AMD which added more than 4%. Meanwhile, Meta Platforms advanced 2% and Tesla jumped more than 7%.
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Viewers can watch the live stream of the event and hear from speakers including Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Kim Yong Gan, Alibaba Group Chairman Joe Tsai, Bridgewater Associates Founder Ray Dalio, and Salesforce CEO, chair, and co-founder Marc Benioff and others here.
— CNBC’s Lisa Kailai Han and Brian Evans contributed to this report.
