Hong Kong Stocks Close At A 10-Month High

On Thursday, the first trading day of the year of the rabbit, trading resumed following the three-day Lunar New Year holiday, and Hong Kong stocks increased, outpacing gains in other markets.

Mainland China’s markets are set to reopen on Monday.

The Hang Seng Index rose 522.13 points, or 2.37%, to 22,566.78, the highest level since March 2, 2022. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index for Chinese H-shares increased 2.983% to 7,706.72, its highest level since July 5.

Melco International led a drop in Macau casino stocks, falling 7.1% to HK$10.22 in its biggest daily percentage drop since December 19.

Shares of China Tourism Group Duty-Free Corp and Prada in Hong Kong have risen due to consumer optimism fueled by mainland tourism.

Around the region, the MSCI Asia ex-Japan stock index rose 1.17%, while Japan’s Nikkei index fell 0.12%.

Xiaomi Corp led the Hang Seng Index gainers with a 12.79% gain. In comparison, Orient Overseas (International) Ltd led the losers with a 2.63% drop.

Xiaomi Corp was the top gainer among H-shares, while China Feihe Ltd was the biggest percentage decliner, down 1.76%.

European Markets

The pan-European Stoxx 600 was up 0.6% in early trading. Financial services added 1.15% to take the lead gains as all sectors, and key bourses entered the green.

Markets were buoyed this week by data showing an improvement in business sentiment in Germany and rising activity in the eurozone’s services and manufacturing sectors, raising hopes that the bloc will avoid recession.

On Thursday morning, corporate earnings were the primary driver of European individual share price movement.

Sartorius shares rose 8% following the release of its full-year earnings report. In comparison, Diageo shares fell 5% to the bottom of the Stoxx 600 following the release of its first-half results.

In light of this, shares of several cloud computing businesses experienced significant declines on Wednesday. Significant losses were reported by Alphabet (GOOGL -2.54%), Snowflake (SNOW -0.93%), and Amazon (AMZN 0.89%).