Today, the equity markets of the Asia-Pacific region are broadly positive. Most stock indicators are growing, but some of the exchanges are still closed due to the Lunar New Year celebration. In particular, China and Hong Kong will resume trade only on Thursday and Tuesday this week. Meanwhile, the rest of the indicators are extending gains.
Japan's Nikkei 225 index added 1.7% 30,010.43 in the early trading session. Notably, the index surpassed such a high level (the 30,000-point threshold) for the first time in the last thirty years. This fact helped improve investors' risk appetite.
In addition, the statistics on the country's economic development turned out to be rather positive. Thus, Japan's economy posted a better-than-expected growth in the October-December quarter, marking the second reporting period without a negative impact. Therefore, most analysts expect a rapid recovery not only in demand for goods within the country but also in exports. In general, the Japanese economy expanded by an average of 3% on a quarter-on-quarter basis. In the third quarter, its economy advanced a record 5.3%, while experts predicted a figure not higher than 2.3%.
Nevertheless, Japan ended the year 2020 with a 4.8% contraction, noting the first decline since a 5.7% plunge seen in the global financial crisis days of 2009.
South Korea's KOSPI was up by 1.5%.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 Index climbed by 0.9%. Market participants hastened to respond to the extremely positive corporate statistics. The real figures turned out to be much better than the anticipated ones.
