Asian Stocks Surge – US-FOREX.US
HONG KONG -
Even though the U.S. Federal Reserve overnight concluded its two-day interest rate meeting with a cautious tone, Asian stocks surged across the board on Thursday. Japanese manufacturers climbed on a weaker yen and overseas expansion, while Australian investors were happy to see the International Monetary Fund has revised up its economic forecast on the Aussie economy. The yen weakened against the U.S. greenback, hitting 96.22 in Asia on Thursday, down from 95.66. The dollar rose after the U.S. central bank decided to hold its benchmark overnight rates in a range between zero to 0.25%. The dollar rose for the second day after the Open Market Committee of the Fed said Wednesday that it would not increase its purchase of bonds in an attempt to further prop up U.S. economy. Japanese exporters rose on the depreciated yen, boosting the Nikkei 225 Index up 1.6% to 9,741.87 after midday. Honda Motor
and Toyota Motor
added 3.1% and 1.9%, respectively, even though both automakers reported poor sales performance in May. Honda Motor announced Thursday that its exports fell for the eight straight month in May, plummeting 65.2% on a yearly basis to 18,156 units. Domestic sales also declined over 6% to 37,525 units. Likewise, Toyota Motor announced on the same day that its export sales toppled 51.3% to 100,117 units in May, while sales at home lost 23.1% to 82,394 units, both making for the 10th consecutive decline.
Mitsubishi Electric Corp
rocketed 7.4% to 611 yen after Nikkei reported the company planned to build factories in the U.S. and in Europe next year to produce solar power generation systems using solar cells shipped from Japan. The new plant in Europe would quickly boost the annual production capacity of Mitsubishi Electric Corp to 100,000 kilowatts, the newspaper added.
Aozora Bank rose 9.4% to 152 yen after the ailing bank said is in talks with another money-losing lender Shinsei Bank for a possible merger next year. Shinsei shares jumped 8.3% to 157 yen . Hong Kong shares opened up 1.4% on Thursday, and the Hang Seng Index traded higher 1.9% at 18,224.06 before the midday bell. China’s second largest oil company China Petroleum & Chemical Corp
, commonly known as Sinopec, rose 0.7% to 5.63 Hong Kong dollars after it agreed to pay 7.2 billion in cash to buy the Toronto and London listed Addax Petroleum Corp in a deal to obtain huge oil reserves in Iraq’s Kurdistan and West Africa. Australia’s S&P/ASX200 rose 1.1% to 3,847.20 after the International Monetary Fund has revised its Australia’s economic growth forecasts to negative 0.5% this year, up from its initial estimate of negative 1.4%.
Thomson Financial contributed to this article.