Asian stocks rose to their highest level in more than a month on Tuesday, boosted by Wall Street.
Some markets were supported by US stocks that closed higher last night, especially technology stocks that led the market. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, announced his investment in Twitter. In addition, energy stocks also rallied as crude oil prices rose amid tensions in Ukraine.
The SEC reported that Tesla CEO Elon Musk bought 9.2% of Twitter shares. This makes Musk the largest shareholder outside of Twitter. The news also had an impact on other tech names that started to rise after the announcement.
- The MSCI equity index for the Asia-Pacific region outside Japan rose 0.3% to 602.2 points, its highest level since Feb. 24.
- The Japanese stock market NIKKEI 225 closed at 27,787.98 points, up 51.51 points or 0.19%.
- The S&P/ASX 200 (Sydney) index was up 0.19% or 14.20 points at 7,527.60.
- The KOSPI (Seoul) increased by 0.05% or 1.30 points to 2,759.20.
- The SET (Thailand) fell 0.1% to 1,701.18.
- China and Hong Kong stock markets are closed today (April 5) for the Qingming Festival.
Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said today that household spending in Japan rose 1.1% in February from a year earlier, marking an increase for the second consecutive month.
Tokyo – Japanese household spending rose for the second month in a row in February, up 1.1 percent year on year. Average spending by households with two or more people was 257,887 yen ($2,100), according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. The latest data are overstated by a 6.5 percent drop in spending in the same month last year, for example, when Tokyo was under a state of emergency that included calls to skip non-essential outings.