US stocks rally, led by tech giants on positive news flows. Asia Pacific markets extend positive momentum except for Chinese and Hong Kong equities as regulators consider new cooling measures.
S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 bounced back, Hong Kong stocks underperformed
Yesterday, the US stock markets shrugged off the fears of a weak seasonality factor in September and the early scare on Tuesday, as the bulls bounced back, led by the technology and communication services sectors.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 outperformed on Wednesday, 3 September, with gains of 0.5% and 0.8% respectively, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (-0.05%) and small-caps Russell 2000 (-0.1%) closed almost unchanged.
Positive news flows arising from two US mega-cap technology stocks have contributed to yesterday’s positive performance of the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, where the shares of Apple and Alphabet, Google's parent company, rose by 3.8% and 9% respectively.
Apple, long seen as a laggard in the artificial intelligence (AI) productivity theme, has announced plans to launch its own AI-powered web search tool next year to compete with OpenAI and Perplexity.
Meanwhile, Google has managed to dodge its biggest antitrust case in three decades as a US judge ruled against the government’s proposal to break up Google.
In today’s Asia session, most Asia-Pacific stock markets extended their positive momentum, except for Hong Kong and Chinese equities, which lagged.
Media reports suggest that China’s financial regulators are weighing new cooling measures, including easing certain short-selling curbs, amid concerns over the rapid pace of a $1.2 trillion rally in the China “A” shares market since early August.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index extended its losses for the third consecutive session with an intraday drop of -1.1% at the time of writing. Meanwhile, China’s CSI 300 declined by a larger magnitude with an intraday loss of -2.1%.
Key economic releases today that could influence markets will be the Eurozone retail sales for July, the US ADP employment change, and the US ISM Services PMI for August.
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