BANGKOK (AP) – Asian stocks were mixed on Wednesday after a day of listless trading on Wall Street in the absence of market-moving data.
China reported a 7.5% year-on-year fall in its exports and a 4.5% fall in imports in May. This adds to signs of a slowing in the country’s economic recovery after anti-virus controls affecting travel and trade were lifted in December.
The decline in exports was the first year-on-year decline in three months, with export volumes slipping below levels at the start of the year. “And with the worst still to come for many developed economies, we expect exports to fall further before bottoming out later this year,” Capital Economics’ Julian Evans-Pritchard said in a comment.
The Shanghai Composite Index was little changed at 3,195.88, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1% to 19,285.10.
The Nikkei 225 index in Tokyo lost 0.8% to 32,234.21. In Seoul, the Kospi was up 0.3% to 2,623.20, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.2% to 7,143.60. Stocks fell in Taiwan and Southeast Asia.
On Tuesday, the S&P 500 was up 0.2% to 4,283.85. It is just 0.2% away from surging 20% from mid-October levels as a long-predicted recession lingers and the artificial intelligence frenzy has boosted a select group of stocks.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up less than 0.1% to 33,573.28, while the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.4% to 13,276.42.
Gitlab rose 31.2% after the software development platform issued a fiscal year revenue guidance that beat analysts’ expectations.
Investors are waiting for what will happen first: a recession or inflation falling so sharply that the Federal Reserve will begin cutting interest rates, which have risen so much that they have hurt various parts of the economy.
Next week the US government will release its latest monthly updates on inflation and the Federal Reserve will meet on interest rate policy. Wall Street is anticipating the Fed could hold off on rate hikes in what would be the first time in more than a year, but could start raising rates again in July.
Among the strongest actions on Tuesday was the cryptocurrency world after the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Coinbase with operating its trading platform as an unregistered national securities exchange, broker and clearing house.
Shares of parent company Coinbase Global plunged 12.1% after the SEC also accused it of being responsible for some of Coinbase’s violations. Other allegations have centered on Coinbase’s staking-as-a-service program, where users receive payments for their cryptocurrencies almost as if they were earning interest from a traditional bank savings account.
Coinbase criticized the SEC’s approach to crypto, saying, “The solution is legislation that allows fair traffic rules to be developed transparently and applied equally, not litigation.”
A day earlier, the SEC had filed 13 indictments against another major crypto trading platform, Binance, and its founders. Binance said it is in talks to reach a negotiated settlement to resolve the SEC investigation.
The AI hype has propelled a handful of stocks to huge gains this year, including Nvidia’s 164.5% surge. This has contributed to much of the S&P 500’s gains in 2023, but it’s also prompted critics to question whether a bubble is forming. They also say that the excitement around AI may be masking weakness beneath the surface of the S&P 500.
Although the S&P 500 is approaching a bull market, almost as many stocks are down as they are up this year as concerns persist about falling corporate earnings, still-high inflation and much higher interest rates than a year ago.
In other trading Wednesday, U.S. crude fell 31 cents to $71.43 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On Tuesday it lost 41 cents to $71.74 a barrel. A barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, was down 36 cents at $75.93.
Both were close to $120 a year ago but have fallen on worries about fuel needs from the struggling global economy.
The US dollar bought 139.24 Japanese yen, down from 139.66 yen. The euro fell from $1.0695 to $1.0690.
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AP business journalists Matt Ott, Stan Choe and Joe McDonald contributed.