Asian stocks mixed after Christmas results cheer Wall Street

The holiday spending results have added to the positive sentiment across trading floors following the US-China trade thaw

HONG KONG (AFP) - Asian markets were mixed yesterday following another strong lead from Wall Street where tech stocks won big with strong 
Christmas results.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq finished above 9,000 for the first time on Thursday, hitting its 10th straight record fuelled by gains by e-commerce behemoth Amazon and other tech giants. The Dow and the S&P 500 also closed higher.

Hong Kong was the major winner in Asia after the strong overnight cue, putting on 1.3 percent.

Tokyo’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index closed down, dropping 0.4 percent with low investor participation ahead of the year-end holidays.

Mainland China’s Shanghai Composite Index also closed in negative territory, slipping 0.1 percent.

Elsewhere, Sydney rose 0.4 percent, Seoul added 0.3 percent, and Singapore was up 0.2 percent.

A report by Mastercard Spending Plus estimated that holiday shopping sales rose by a better-than-expected 3.4 percent this year, with e-commerce taking a bigger bite of overall sales.
US consumers’ “willingness to open the purse strings has offset declining business investment in the face of the trade war and economic uncertainty”, Stephen Innes, chief Asia market strategist at AxiTrader, said in a note. Amazon jumped 4.5 percent after boasting of another “record” performance this season.

Other tech giants including Apple, Google parent Alphabet and Facebook all gained at least one percent. “Santa Claus appears to have returned to Wall Street overnight... dropping off another round of goodies for investors,” Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst for Asia-Pacific at OANDA, said in a note.

The holiday spending results have added to the positive sentiment across trading floors following the US-China trade thaw, and the expectation that the “phase one” deal between Washington and Beijing will be finalised next month.

Markets have been spooked since US President Donald Trump launched his trade war against China, and analysts have voiced fears about the impact of the bruising spat on global economic growth.

Both main oil contracts were up, driven by US-China trade hopes and sustained demand, analysts said.

Brent Crude was up 0.3 percent, and West Texas Intermediate rose 0.4 percent.

“Optimism about trade helped the outlook for global growth and with it the demand for oil while the US consumer is showing few signs of tightening their purse strings, which is positive for oil also,” wrote AxiTrader’s Innes.

In early European trade, London climbed 0.3 percent, Frankfurt gained 0.3 percent, and Paris put on 0.3 percent.