sia shares rise on vaccine hopes, tech rally on Wall Street
Asian shares were mostly higher Tuesday on rising hopes for an effective vaccine to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
Scientists at Oxford
University reported that their experimental coronavirus vaccine
prompted a protective immune response in hundreds of people who got the
shot in an early trial.
Other projects are
under way. A vaccine under development by colleagues of Dr. Anthony
Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert at the National
Institutes of Health, and Moderna Inc., will start its final testing
around July 27. The 30,000-person study is intended to prove if the
shots are strong enough to protect against the coronavirus.
Japan’s benchmark
Nikkei 225 gained 0.7% to finish at 22,884.22. South Korea’s Kospi
jumped 1.3% to 2,227.28. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 added 2.6% to
6,156.30. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.8% to 25,499.26, while the
Shanghai Composite was little changed, edging up less than 0.1% higher,
to 3,316.28.
Shares also rose in Taiwan and most of Southeast Asia.
Asian economies have
been carrying out a “new-normal” balancing act of opening economies,
with people going shopping and eating out, while doing social distancing
and wearing masks.
That’s had mixed
results, with cases shooting up recently in Tokyo to triple-digit
figures for daily newly confirmed cases. Japan had so far avoided the
massive cases and deaths seen in harder hit nations like the U.S.,
India, Brazil and parts of Europe.
Overnight, U.S.
technology and communication stocks and companies that rely on consumer
spending led mixed gains on Wall Street, outweighing losses elsewhere in
the market.
Amazon led the way
higher in the S&P 500 with a 7.9% gain. Microsoft also helped lift
the market, rising 4.3%. Noble Energy climbed 5.4% after the company
agreed to be acquired by Chevron for $5 billion.
Technology and
communications stocks and big e-commerce retailers like Amazon have
benefited this year as the pandemic has forced people to largely stay
home and rely increasingly on the internet for shopping, work and
entertainment. Banks, airlines and cruise lines have suffered.
The S&P 500
gained 0.8% to 3,251.84. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which was
down for most of the day, inched just 0.1% higher, to 26,680.87.
The Nasdaq had its
best day since the end of April, climbing 2.5% to 10,767.09. The Russell
2000 index of small company stocks gave up 0.4% to 1,467.95.
Wall Street is
coming off its third straight weekly gain following improvements in
hiring, retail sales and other parts of the economy, along with rising
hopes for a COVID-19 vaccine. Still, worries remain that the rise of
coronavirus counts will derail efforts to reopen businesses shut down
due to the pandemic.
This week will bring
earnings reports from major U.S. companies such as Coca-Cola and
Microsoft. Expectations are low for companies’ performance in the
April-June quarter due to the pandemic, given the economic fallout from
the broad business shutdowns and higher unemployment.
The price of
benchmark U.S oil added 11 cents to $40.92 a barrel in electronic
trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It gained 22 cents to
$40.81 a barrel Monday. Brent crude oil, the international standard,
rose 17 cents to $43.45 a barrel.
The U.S. dollar rose to 107.33 Japanese yen from 107.20 yen. The euro fell to $1.1443 from $1.1444.
___
AP Business Writers Alex Veiga and Damian J. Troise contributed.
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