This is CNBC’s live blog covering the Asia-Pacific market.
Asia-Pacific markets opened higher on Wednesday, tracking Wall Street’s gains overnight. Nasdaq Composite Despite strong inflation data, the index closed at a new all-time high.
of producer price index The April figure was 0.5%, higher than the 0.3% expected by economists compiled by Dow Jones. Although the market’s initial reaction was negative, the stock price subsequently rose as wholesale prices fell 0.1% in March, leading to a downward revision.
Markets in South Korea and Hong Kong were closed on Wednesday for public holidays.
Investors also appreciated Australia’s annual budget released late on Tuesday.
In Australia, S&P/ASX 200 The index opened 0.44% higher.
Japanese Nikkei Stock Average rose 0.75%, while the broader TOPIX rose 0.53%.
Stocks ended Tuesday higher on Wall Street overnight as investors awaited important inflation reports.
The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.75% to close at a record high of 16,511.18.
of Dow Jones Industrial Average Added 126.60 points (0.32%), S&P500 Added 0.48%.
—CNBC’s Lisa Kailai Han and Brian Evans contributed to this report.
CNBC Pro: These are Goldman Sachs’ favorite stocks with more than 50% upside potential
Stock prices are plummeting.
The S&P 500 has soared to record highs this year, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average just had its best week of the year, posting an eight-game winning streak last Friday.
But Goldman Sachs still gives some of its favorite stocks more than 50% upside and one stock more than 100% upside.
CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here.
— Tan Weizhen
CNBC Pro: Is meme trading coming back? These 4 stocks could benefit from the retail investor boom
Whether individual investors can profit from their bets game stop and AMC Entertainment Whether you like it or not, one group of companies is hoping to profit from the surge in transactions.
Until now, these four companies had acknowledged that increased trading by individual investors was boosting their profits.
CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here.
— Ganesh Rao
Inflation remains too high to justify rate cuts this year, strategists say.
The Fed is unlikely to cut interest rates this year, said Megan Hornman, chief investment officer at Verdence Capital Advisors.
Hornman also sees a low chance of a rate hike, but believes the U.S. central bank will be forced to keep rates unchanged for the rest of the year as inflation continues.
“They made the problem worse by being so dovish and allowing the market to price in so many rate cuts last year,” he said. “They need to make the market more realistic about where interest rates are going.”
— Lisa Kailai Han
Citi: “Negative economic surprises will ultimately drive stock prices lower”
While markets have recently reacted positively to negative economic surprises, Citi believes this ‘bad news is good news’ pattern will soon change.
“Seasonal surprises tend to trough now, and with no Fed rate hikes scheduled in the near term, any good economic news will be welcomed by risk assets,” said analyst Nathaniel Rupert. Stated.
He added: “However, as cracks appear in the labor market and more indicators fall below consensus, this could ultimately weigh on stock prices (although an initial rate cut may be seen as positive). “We also expect financial conditions to tighten.”
— Lisa Kailai Han
Bank of America says OpenAI event will ‘raise the bar’ for AI chatbots
Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya said OpenAI’s Monday event, which introduced a new desktop app and several updates, “raised the bar again for consumer chatbots.”
The event “raises the bar for AI assistants,” he wrote in a note Tuesday, adding that the computing and networking capabilities needed to address expanding artificial intelligence use cases will make semiconductor stocks a multi-year investment. He added that there will be tailwinds for growth.
Analyst Wamsi Mohan also highlighted that Apple could benefit from OpenAI, multimodal assistants, and potential productivity gains.
“The majority of the demo used a ‘hard-wired’ iPhone to reduce latency for real-time interactions,” he writes. “Gross margin growth and services momentum maintains the benefits of his GenAI purchases at the Edge.”
Still, Rosenblatt’s Barton Crockett sees the event as a potential competitive pressure point for Alphabet ahead of the Google I/O event. The development also appears to be a turnaround for Apple, which has struggled for years to develop similar functionality for its Siri component, he added.
“Apple suspects internally that OpenAI is far from being what it just demonstrated,” he wrote. “If Google doesn’t demonstrate ability to match OpenAI in I/O, Apple will be under significant pressure to partner with OpenAI to modernize Siri with the state of AI.”
— Samantha Subin
