Japanese shares

Asian shares headed higher on Wednesday, getting a strong lead from Wall Street where rising oil prices led to a rebound in the market.

The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones indexes both gained over 1% as oil prices rallied overnight to climb by around 3% after Monday’s declines.

Encouraging economic data such as housing and consumer confidence in the US also boosted investor sentiment.

Japan’s Nikkei was up 0.6% to 19,097.14 in the year’s final trading day.

Japanese markets will be closed on Thursday for a public holiday.

Rest of Asia

In Australia, the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index was up 0.7% to 5,304.20, leading the gains in the region.

But commodity shares still weighed on the market with shares of mining giants BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto down 0.9% and 0.4% respectively.

Chinese shares were barely unchanged with the Shanghai Composite trading flat at 3,565.77, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was up 0.1% to 22,016.92.

South Korea’s Kospi index was higher by 0.1% to 1,967.60 points.

Investors ignored data that showed industrial production saw its worst decline in 10 months in November on slumping global demand for exports.

Factory output fell a seasonally adjusted 2.1% from a month earlier, according to Statistics Korea.

[Source:- bbc news]

 

By Adam