Asia Kicks Off New Year After Ominous End to 2024: Markets Wrap

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(Bloomberg) — Asian stocks were set to start the new year on a bad note after an inauspicious end to a stellar 2024 for global equity investors.

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The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 fell for a fourth straight session in a year-end decline that shaved more than $1 trillion off large market caps. Benchmark futures fell in Shanghai and mainland Chinese indices fell on the final day of trading in December. Shares in Sydney opened little changed.

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While most Asian stocks were expected to decline on Thursday, futures showed that the Hong Kong index may rise. Japanese markets are closed until January 6th. New Zealand is still on holiday, while South Korea will open late.

Energy markets will be watched as trading resumes on Thursday after the flow of Russian gas to Europe via Ukraine was halted, closing a route that has been operating for five decades. The two sides confirmed the stop on Wednesday after the main transit agreement expired.

Oil prices rose on the final day of 2024 to close out a flat performance for the year as the market braces for a global surplus in 2025. A broad measure of Treasuries posted annual gains in 2024, albeit smaller than in 2023. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index saw His best year in nearly a decade.

In other news over the New Year period, Nippon Steel Corp has offered to give the US government veto power over any reduction in US Steel Corp’s production capacity, in a last-ditch effort to win President Joe Biden’s approval for its takeover of the company. American company. Shares of US Steel rose the most in a year.

In China, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. on the sale of its shares in Sun Art Retail Group Ltd. to private equity firm DCP Capital, offloading high-profile physical trading assets to focus on its core online business. Meanwhile, China’s BYD announced a year-end increase, bringing total sales to 4.25 million passenger cars last year.

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President Xi Jinping said that at the macroeconomic level, the world’s second-largest economy is expected to grow by about 5% for the entire year of 2024. China’s central bank injected 1.7 trillion yuan ($233 billion) of cash in December, further boosting liquidity support for the economy and financial markets at the end of the year.

Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said the country’s economy will perform better than expected in 2024. GDP expanded by 4%, Wong said in his New Year message. This exceeds the Commerce Department’s November forecast of growth of about 3.5%.

Meanwhile, the political crisis continued in South Korea, with acting President Choe Sang-mok on Wednesday rejecting an attempt by his advisers to resign en masse.

Australian house prices fell for the first time in 22 months in December, as buyers increasingly found themselves out of the market while property supply increased, new data showed.

Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Company was the world’s most active sovereign wealth fund last year, ramping up dealmaking in everything from private credit to artificial intelligence. This came at a time when the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which was the most active in 2023, slowed spending and refocused on investing at home.

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Stocks, especially US technology stocks, outperformed almost every other asset class in 2024. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 23%, rising for the fifth time in six years, in an advance that added $10 trillion to the values ​​of US stocks. The MSCI World Index rose 16%.

Even as the US economy advances, multi-asset investors head into 2025 facing a host of challenges, the first of which is inflation and the Fed’s response to it – especially after Chairman Jerome Powell indicated there would be fewer interest rate cuts in the future. . Another question is how President-elect Donald Trump’s pro-growth policies will affect consumer prices and federal finances.

Main events this week:

• US Construction Spending, Unemployment Claims, Manufacturing PMI, Thursday
• US ISM Manufacturing Index, Light Vehicle Sales, Friday

Some of the key movements in the markets as of 8:15 AM Tokyo time:

Stocks

• S&P 500 futures rose 0.3%
• Hang Seng futures rose 0.3%
• There was little change in the S&P/ASX 200 index

Currencies

• The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rose 0.4% on December 31
• There was little change in the euro at the beginning of the new year at $1.0353
• There was little change in the Japanese yen at 157.29 to the dollar
• There was little change in the yuan in external transactions at 7.3337 to the dollar

Cryptocurrencies

• Bitcoin fell 0.2% to $94,611.92
• Ethereum fell 0.2% to $3,355.65

Bonds

• The yield on 10-year Treasury bonds was little changed at 4.57%.
• The 10-year Australian bond yield added four basis points on Thursday to 4.40%.

Goods

• West Texas Intermediate crude rose 0.3% to $71.97 a barrel
• There was little change in spot gold

This story was produced with assistance from Bloomberg Automation.

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