Asian Markets Open Higher After Boxing Day

Investing.com – Most Asian markets rose on Friday morning helped along by a rally on Wall Street that has seen the Nasdaq hit all-time highs and other markets trade broadly higher.

Amazon.com (NASDAQ:) stood out on Thursday as the best performer on the S&P 500, following data of a record-breaking season in online sales. The Nasdaq finished above 9,022, pushed higher by a rally in technology stocks.

The positive news from Wall Street was not enough to keep the up. The leading index of the Tokyo stock market was 0.04% lower by 9:25 PM ET (02:25 GMT). The Nikkei was kept down by official data that showed industrial production fell for a second month in a row in November and retail rales by 2.1%, lower than the 1.7% fall expected by the market, according to Reuters.

“There is still uncertainty for the economic outlook as the effects from the U.S. – China trade friction will likely remain but there are positive signals for a moderate pickup in factory output,” Hiroaki Mutou, chief economist at Tokai Tokyo Research Institute, said in a note quoted by Reuters.

A government official in Japan said that manufacturing output was down, in part as a result of slowing international demand of semiconductor production parts and devices.

Meanwhile in China, the rose 0.50% and the Shenzhen Component was up 0.31%. Hong Kong’s gained 1.10%.

The positive mood was helped by the likely signing in early January of a phase one trade deal with the U.S., which helped overcome news of poor performance by the Chinese economy during the fourth quarter compared to the rest of the year, according to a report by China Beige Book, an independent data firm focused on the Chinese market.

“Manufacturers may have passed the bulk of the oversupply problem to retailers, as their inventory accumulation slowed in both Q3 and Q4,” said the report quoted by CNBC.

Further south, Australia’s rose 0.26%.

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