Stocks in Asia-Pacific Were Mixed on May 21

Stocks in Asia-Pacific were Mixed on May 21, after an overnight bounce on Wall Street. In Taiwan, the Taiex jumped 1.62% on the day to end its trading day at 16,302.06. India’s Nifty 50 also saw robust gains, rising 1.3%, as of about 1:47 p.m. local time.

Mainland Chinese stocks suffered losses, as the Shanghai composite fell 0.58% to 3,486.56. In the meantime, the Shenzhen component dropped 0.809% to 14,417.46.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index closed little changed at 28,458.44. Shares of Tencent in Hong Kong fell 3.37% on May 21, despite the Chinese tech giant posting a 65% surge in its quarterly profit on May 20.

In Japan, the Nikkei 225 advanced 0.78% to end its trading day at 28,317.83. The Topix index added 0.46% to close at 1,904.69.

South Korea’s Kospi declined 0.19% to 3,156.42.

In Australia, the S&P 500 added 0.15% to 7,030.30.

U.S. stocks on May 20

On Thursday, U.S. stocks rebounded from three straight days of losses as technology shares staged a comeback.

The latest jobless claims also helped to boost sentiment. The number of first-time claims for unemployment benefits for the week ended on May 15 came in at 444,000. First-time claims fell to the lowest level since March 14, 2020.

The S&P 500 advanced nearly 1.1% to 4,159.12 with tech being the major gainer among 11 sectors. The Nasdaq Composite added 1.8% to 13,535.74 as Microsoft, Alphabet, as well as Facebook all gained more than 1%. Apple and Netflix added more than 2% each. Oatly shares jumped nearly 19% during the company’s public market debut on Nasdaq. The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 188.11 points or 0.6%, to 34,084.15.

Tesla, chip stocks, and other speculative parts of the market declined in the previous session. They bounced back on Thursday amid a recovery in bitcoin prices. Bitcoin jumped as high as 9%  to above $42,000. One day earlier, bitcoin fell to as low as nearly $30,000. It cut its gains and briefly turned negative after the Treasury Department said it is taking steps to crack down on cryptocurrency markets as well as transactions. It will require any transfer worth $10,000 or more to be reported to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Shares of Coinbase added 3.8% following the announcement made by Wedbush. Tesla gained 4.1% and Microstrategy jumped nearly 4%.