An inflatable bull during a ceremony marking the first day of trading of the year at the Korea Exchange (KRX) headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2024. SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Most Asia-Pacific markets rose Tuesday, with South Korea’s benchmark Kospi hitting two-year highs as investors digested a fresh batch of economic data.
Japan’s service producer price index for February coming in at 2.1%. The Nikkei 225 closed flat at 40,398.03, while the broader Topix ended 0.11% higher at 2,780.80.
Singapore’s manufacturing output increased 14.2% in February from January. January saw a 6.7% decline in manufacturing. The country’s Straits Times index rose 1.31%.
South Korea’s Kospi was up 0.71% at 2,757.09, after hitting its highest level since February 2022 earlier in the day. The smaller-cap Kosdaq closed 0.26% higher at 916.09, touching its highest level since September.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.41% to end at 7,780.20, after coming close to its all-time high on Monday.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index climbed 1.36%, powered by energy and industrial stocks, while the mainland Chinese CSI 300 rose 0.56%.
Overnight in the U.S., all three major indexes lost ground, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 0.41% and the S&P 500 dipping 0.31%, while the Nasdaq Composite was 0.27% lower.
Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research, noted that equities have gotten expensive, with the S&P now trading at a 33% premium to its average price-to-earnings ratio over the last 20 years.
“We’re coming off of a post-FOMC high,” he told CNBC, referring to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting last week. “The market is getting more and more vulnerable to a market decline or a pullback in prices.”
— CNBC’s Lisa Kailai Han and Pia Singh contributed to this report
