SINGAPORE — Asia-Pacific stocks rose after oil prices fell overnight. Bitcoin, meanwhile, surged above a key level and the yen continued to weaken.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 0.45% as casino and tech stocks rose. Among the biggest gainers was JD Health, which rose nearly 16% after announcing on Monday it would conduct a share buyback of up to HK$3 billion over 24 months.
Real estate stocks, however, bucked the broader trend as Sunac fell almost 20% and Shimao lost 7%. China’s CSI property index was previously down as much as 2% but pared losses to a 0.61% decline.
Sunac said late Monday it would halt trading from April 1, days after it announced it would defer reporting its 2021 financial results and join a growing list of Chinese developers who are unable to make profits in a timely manner to publish.
Mainland China pared earlier gains, with the Shanghai composite slipping 0.43% while the Shenzhen component slipped 0.57%.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.51%, while the Topix rose 0.43%. Tech stocks rose, with Sony up nearly 1% and SoftBank Group up 1.61%.
The yen caught the eye of investors after the Bank of Japan on Monday offered to buy unlimited amounts of 10-year JGBs at 0.25% for the first four days of this week. The yen fell and last traded at 123.25 per dollar, hovering near a six-year low.
The yen’s weakness sparked comments from Japanese officials on Tuesday, with Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki saying Japan will monitor forex movements carefully to avoid “bad yen weakness,” Reuters reported.
“The Japanese yen remains the main story in the forex land, with USD/JPY extending its vertical rise over the past 24 hours,” wrote Rodrigo Catril, senior FX strategist at National Australia Bank, in a note Tuesday.
A key factor behind the yen’s recent weakness has been the Bank of Japan’s yield curve control (YCC) policy, which has capped the interest rate on 10-year Japanese government bonds (JGBs) at a 0.25% range, despite yields on global ones core bonds have risen. explained Catril. This policy included keeping the 10-year government bond yield at or near zero.
Markets wondered if commitment to the policy “wobbled” amid concerns about rising inflation, Catril said. But the central bank’s move to buy the JGBs “sent a strong signal that YCC will be here for a while.”
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That pushed the yen to a seven-year low of 125 against the dollar on Monday, but later regained some ground to a six-year low of 124, according to Reuters.
“The confirmation of its YCC commitment sparked aggressive yen selling, with USD/JPY rallying to a high of 125.09 yen before retreating to the current 123.87 yen,” Catril said Tuesday morning.
“Expect the Bank of Japan to continue buying unlimited bonds to support the [10-year] JGB yield at 0.25% limit amid yield curve control,” said DBS FX strategists Eugene Leow and Philip Wee in a statement.
Elsewhere in Asia-Pacific markets, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.77% as bank stocks rose. Bucking the trend, however, some mining companies and oil stocks fell. South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.27%.
Australia reported February retail sales that beat expectations, rising 1.8% from January to AUD 33.1 billion (US$ 24.8 billion). That beat forecasts of a 1% gain, according to a Reuters poll.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia Pacific stocks outside of Japan rose 0.47%.
Oil prices collapse
currencies
Bitcoin broke the key $45,000 level overnight and erased its 2022 losses by surging as much as 6.7% to $47,914.35. It reversed earlier gains during Asia trade, according to Coin Metrics, and was last down 1.38% to $47,352.
The US Dollar Index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, came in at 99.054 – a jump from a 98.8 level in previous sessions.
The Australian dollar was at $0.7482, a touch weaker than the previous $0.75.
— CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.