Asian stocks up after Nasdaq and S & P 500 hit record highs By Reuters

By Andrew Galbraith

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Asian equity markets rallied on Wednesday morning after optimistic earnings helped Nasdaq and indexes reach record Wall Street record closing records overnight, while oil retreated after record highs in the market. almost six months.

The broadest MSCI index, composed of Asia-Pacific equities outside of Japan, rose 0.1% during the first transactions in Asia. The gains followed a strong performance on Wall Street, driven by strong results from Coca-Cola (NYSE :), Twitter, United Technologies (NYSE 🙂 and Lockheed Martin (NYSE :).

The increase of 0.52% to 26 647.97%, that of the S & P 500 from 0.91% to 2 934.31 and the increase of 1.35% to 8 123.25.

On Wednesday morning, S & P 500 e-mini futures were up 2.938.75, up 0.03%, close to the record high of 2 944.75 recorded on 3 October.

Australian stocks gained 0.6%, while the Japanese stock index was up 0.3%. Kospi Seoul increased by 0.1%.

An analyst said that in addition to the profits of companies better than feared, a more favorable political environment helps to stimulate risk appetite.

"The Fed has been joined by major central banks around the world, a trend that broadly reflects the real concern not to let countries and the world sink into recession," said Greg McKenna. , strategist at McKenna Macro in Australia, said in a note to customers.

Equity market gains were boosted on Tuesday by rising shares of energy after the global benchmark hit its highest level since Nov. 1.

Oil prices rose after the US ended six months of waivers that allowed Iran's eight largest buyers, mostly in Asia, to continue importing limited volumes of Iranian oil. .

Gulf OPEC members stated that instead of offsetting any deficit resulting from the US waiver decision, they would only increase their production if there was demand.

But Wednesday morning, Brent had waived some gains, down 0.54% to 74.11 dollars a barrel. plunged from $ 0.54 to $ 65.94 per barrel.

US Treasury yields have fallen. The benchmark yielded 2.5686% against a US closing of 2.57% on Tuesday, while the two-year yield slipped to 2.316%, against a US close of 2.364%.

The, which follows the greenback against a basket of six major rivals, lost 0.03% to 97.606. The dollar was down 0.04% against the yen at 111.82.

The euro fell slightly by 0.08% to buy 1.1216 USD.

fell about 0.1% to 1,271.07 dollars an ounce.