BANGKOK — Shares opened higher in Asia on Monday after a strong finish last week on Wall Street.
Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul and Shanghai all started out with modest gains and U.S. futures
YM00,
+0.13%
ES00,
+0.08%
also edged higher. Oil prices slipped.
Stocks climbed Friday in New York, though the S&P 500 still ended with its first weekly loss in the last five. Technology stocks and banks led much of the gains, while investors focused on lackluster company earnings from big names like Intel, American Express and Honeywell.
So far, Asian markets have taken in stride recent setbacks in vanquishing the pandemic as infections have come roaring back in Japan, Thailand and India, among other countries.
Government precautions to battle surging outbreaks point to an uneven global recovery, economists say. That’s especially true for tourism, an important industry for many parts of the region.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225
NIK,
+0.60%
added 0.5% and the Hang Seng
HSI,
+0.08%
in Hong Kong edged less than 0.1% higher. In Seoul, the Kospi
180721,
+0.74%
jumped 0.8%. The Shanghai Composite index
SHCOMP,
+0.19%
rose 0.2%, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200
XJO,
-0.06%
was flat. Shares fell in Jakarta
JAKIDX,
-0.60%
but rose in Taiwan
Y9999,
+1.41%
and Singapore
STI,
+0.08%.
On Friday, the benchmark S&P 500
SPX,
+1.09%
rose 1.1% to 4,180.17. The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
+0.67%
rose 0.7% to 34,043.49. The tech-heavy Nasdaq
COMP,
+1.44%
climbed 1.4% to 14,016.81.
About a quarter of S&P 500 companies have reported quarterly results so far this earnings season. Of these, 84% have delivered earnings that topped Wall Street’s estimates, according to FactSet.
This week is another busy one for earnings, with 181 S&P 500 companies, including Tesla
TSLA,
+1.35%,
Starbucks
SBUX,
+1.41%,
Microsoft
MSFT,
+1.55%
and Amazon.com
AMZN,
+0.96%,
set to report results.
Investors are also weighing the implications of President Joe Biden’s plans to introduce higher capital gains taxes to help pay for the increased government spending to help the economy recover from the pandemic. Bloomberg News reported the pending proposal Thursday afternoon, citing unidentified sources.
Higher taxes on capital gains would make stocks marginally more expensive in the long term, which might impact the market’s overall valuation. Despite millions of Americans having their retirement funds in the stock and bond markets, most stocks are owned by the rich.
Meanwhile, the price of bitcoin
BTCUSD,
+8.45%
jumped 5.1% to $52,422.18. It dropped about 2% to $50,675 Friday, according to the tracking site CoinDesk. The cryptocurrency had traded for as much as $63,000 as recently as last week.
In other trading, U.S. benchmark crude oil
CLM21,
-0.27%
lost 21 cents to $61.93 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It picked up 71 cents to $62.14 per barrel on Friday. Brent crude
BRNM21,
-0.33%,
the international standard, dropped 99 cents to $65.12 per barrel.
The U.S. dollar
USDJPY,
-0.18%
slipped to 107.71 Japanese yen from 107.93 yen.
