Workers at a resettlement housing construction site in Huai’an City, Jiangsu Province, China, June 17, 2024.
Photo | Future Publishing | Getty Images
SINGAPORE — Most markets in Asia-Pacific fell on Thursday after a press conference from China’s Ministry of Housing failed to impress investors and the country’s real estate stocks plunged.
The CSI 300 real estate index, which was up more than 5% on Wednesday, fell nearly 8%, with the benchmark CSI 300 index down 1.13% to 3,788.22.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 1.3% to 20,030 in the final hours of trading following a number of policy announcements by Hong Kong’s chief executive on Wednesday. The Hang Seng Mainland Real Estate Index fell 6.6%.
Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average fell 0.69% to close at 38,911.19, while the composite index TOPIX fell 0.11% to close at 2,687.83 as investors evaluated trade data from Japan. .
Japan’s exports fell 1.7% in September from a year earlier, surprising economists polled by Reuters who had expected growth of 0.5%. Exports contracted for the first time this year, significantly down from August’s revised growth rate of 5.5%.
Imports grew by 2.1% in September, which was also lower than economists had predicted, who had expected growth of 3.2%. This was down from the 2.3% increase in August.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.86% to close at 8,355.9.
Australia’s unemployment rate in September was 4.1%, slightly lower than the 4.2% forecast for flatness from August in a Reuters poll.
Australia’s labor force participation rate rose slightly to 67.2% in September, up 0.1 percentage points from August and forecasts.
South Korea’s Kospi ended marginally lower at 2,609.30, while the small-cap Kosdaq fell 0.1% to 765.79.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company announced its financial results on Thursday after the Taiwan market closed. Taiex rose 0.19% to close at 23,053.84.
The Dow Jones overnight in the US rose 337.28 points, or 0.79%, to end at 43,077.70.
The S&P 500 rose 0.47% to 5,842.47 and the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.28% to close at 18,367.08.
—CNBC’s Lisa Kailai Han and Jesse Pound contributed to this report.
