On Wednesday, the stock market in Asia was mostly trading in the green. Thus, China's Shanghai Composite and Shenzhen Composite posted significant gains of 1.63% and 2.65% respectively. The Hong Kong Hang Seng Index rose slightly less, by 1.41%. Japan's Nikkei 225 displayed a minor gain of 0.08%, while Korea's KOSPI and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 posted a decline of 0.09% and 0.22% respectively.
Investors are currently focused on the US inflation data which is due to be out today. Inflation is expected to slow down from 8.5% in March to 8.1% in April (year-on-year). So markers are waiting to see whether the forecast will come true.
Last month, China saw its highest spike in prices in the last 5 months due to supply problems. The disruption to supply chains was caused by restrictive measures introduced in China to tackle the new coronavirus wave. The CPI jumped by 2.1%, up from 1.5% in March, while analysts expected to see a rise to 1.8–2%
At the same time, the producer price index (PPI) in China rose by 8% in April compared to 8.3% in March. This is the lowest reading for the past year. At the same time, analysts predicted an even greater decline to 7.7-7.8%.
Among the components of the Hang Seng Index, the top gainers were BYD Co. (+9.7%), Geely (+8.8%), Meituan (+9.6%), and Sunny Optical Technology Group Co. (+8.5%). The shares of Alibaba and JD.com showed minor gains, adding 1.9% and 3.9% respectively.
As for Japan's Nikkei 225 Index, Sony added 2.4% after the company announced it was planning to buy back its shares worth 200 billion Japanese yen. The company also managed to increase net profit for the first quarter by 67% to 111.08 billion yen ($852.5 billion). The estimated profit was projected to be 94.2 billion yen.
Nintendo showed a great result of a 3.9% increase in its stock value after the company announced a 10-to-1 stock split.
The shares of Japanese companies SoftBank Group and Fast Retailing posted a slight increase of 0.1% and 1.6% respectively.
At the same time, the stock value of such companies as Nissan Motor (-1.1%), Toyota Motor (-3.1%), and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (-2.8%) has decreased.
Among the KOSPI components, the price of Samsung Electronics Co. shares went up by 0.8% and Hyundai Motor – by 1.9%.
Among Australian companies, BHP (+1.2%) and Rio Tinto (+2.2%) closed the session in positive territory.
The value of Zip Co. shares fell by 2.9%, while National Australia Bank lost 2.3%. Woodside Petroleum and Santos depreciated by 1.6% and 0.3% respectively.