Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Asian Stocks Rally Over Optimism About Europe

HONG KONG — Asia-Pacific stock markets rallied Thursday, echoing the firm performance on Wall Street, as investors took heart from some solid U.S. economic data and from hopes that European policy makers would step up their efforts to shake off the continent's debt woes.

Global markets have gyrating for months now, and with no sign that the European debt issues will be resolved any time soon, they are likely to remain volatile for the foreseeable future. The feeble state of the U.S. economy and moderating expansion in growth engines like China and India also have compounded the global nervousness.

For the time being, however, the mood has flipped toward the positive, with stock markets in much of Asia rising well over 2 percent on Thursday.

The Nikkei 225 index was 1.4 percent higher by midafternoon in Tokyo, and both the Taiex in Taiwan and the Straits Times index in Singapore jumped about 2 percent.

The Kospi in South Korea rose 3.3 percent and the S.& P./ASX 200 in Australia gained 3.7 percent.

 


No comments: