The Bank of Japan headquarters (top C) is seen in Tokyo on December 19, 2023.
Kazuhiro Nogi | Afp | Getty Images
Hong Kong stocks rebounded Tuesday after two straight days of declines, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 index rose as the Bank of Japan kept its monetary policy unchanged in its first monetary policy meeting of the year.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index jumped as much as 3%, before paring gains to about 2.5%, with tech stocks leading the charge. This comes after a Bloomberg reported that Chinese authorities are considering a package of measures worth 2 trillion yuan ($278.53 billion) to stabilize its stock markets.
Mainland China’s CSI 300 was trading 0.2% lower.
Videogame stocks in Hong Kong rose after China’s gaming authority removed draft rules from its website. The measures proposed last month would have restricted spending and rewards for playing video games. The regulator’s website, however, was unavailable as of Tuesday.
Analysts from Bank of America, Barclays and ING forecast the BOJ would not shift its stance on its negative interest rate policy in this meeting, with BofA and Barclays expecting changes in Japan’s monetary policy only in the April meeting.
The Nikkei 225 rose 0.31% to hit a fresh 33-year peak. The Topix added 0.18%. The Nikkei will hit an all-time high if it breaches the 38,915.871 hit on Dec. 29, 1989.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 is on pace for a third straight day of gains, rising 0.53%.
South Korea’s Kospi added 0.24%, while the small-cap Kosdaq index fell 0.6%.
Overnight in the U.S., the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 set fresh all-time highs, with the Dow gaining 0.36% to finish above 38,000 for the first time, while the S&P added 0.22% to hit record highs.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.32%. The moves from the indexes signaled that Wall Street is indeed in a bull run that began in October 2022 after stocks plunged earlier that year.
— CNBC’s Brian Evans and Alex Harring contributed to this report
