SYDNEY- Asian shares extended gains on Tuesday, taking cues from Wall Street as investors’ focus shifts to earnings reports from US tech giants in the week, while a still strong dollar pressured the Japanese yen to fresh 34-year lows.
Europe looked set for a higher open, with both EUROSTOXX 50 futures and FTSE up 0.5 percent . US stock futures however, slipped 0.1 percent .
In Asia, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.8 percent , helped by a 1.1 percent jump in Taiwanese shares and a 1.8 percent surge in Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index.
The Asian index rose 1 percent the day before on easing fears of a major escalation in the Middle East conflict, recovering some of its 3.7 percent loss last week. Japan’s Nikkei edged up 0.3 percent .
Tech shares in the region rose. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd rallied 2 percent , while the MSCI Asia-Pacific ex-Japan IT index gained 0.8 percent .
However, Chinese shares fell, with the blue chips losing 0.6 percent on lower cyclical shares such as metals.
On Wall Street, big tech shares outperformed ahead of their quarterly results this week, sending the Nasdaq 1.1 percent higher. AI darling Nvidia gained 4.4 percent while Amazon.com rose 1.5 percent and Alphabet jumped 1.4 percent , although Tesla dropped 3.4 as it cut prices in its major markets.
“Odds are the earnings reports that we see over the next few weeks will be positive, but obviously there’s still issues around what the Fed will do the next,” said Shane Oliver, chief economist at AMP. “It’s too early to say that problems in the Middle East have gone away.”
“There are lots of things that could cause volatility between now and the end of the year. And so we’re probably coming to a more constrained, more volatile period for markets.”
Tech giants including Tesla, Meta Platforms, Alphabet and Microsoft will release earnings reports this week.
UBS on Monday downgraded its rating on the mega-cap companies, warning that profit growth momentum of the so-called Big Six technology stocks could “collapse” over the next few quarters.
