Asia-Pacific markets extend gains; China’s exports miss expectations, imports pick up in July

Asia-Pacific markets extended gains on Wednesday, tracking Wall Street benchmarks that snapped a three-day losing streak overnight.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.76%, while the S&P 500 rose 1.04%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 1.03% to close at 16,366.85.

Sentiment was boosted by a rebound in Japanese stocks Tuesday that saw the Nikkei 225 post its best day since October 2008, soaring 10.2%. On Monday, the index suffered its worst session since 1987 amid recession fears, losing 12.4%.

The Nikkei ended Wednesday’s trading up 1.19% at 35,089.62 while Japan’s broad-based Topix gained 2.26% to end at 2,489.21, both building on Tuesday’s rebound.

Japan’s heavyweight trading houses also extended gains for a second day, with Mitsui up 7.4%. SoftBank Group jumped 5.19%, while Canon led Japanese tech stocks, gaining 9.82%.

In a speech on Wednesday, Bank of Japan Deputy Governor Uchida Shinichi said that “the Bank needs to maintain monetary easing with the current policy interest rate for the time being, with developments in financial and capital markets at home and abroad being extremely volatile.”

Japan’s Ministry of Finance disclosed on the same day that it conducted a record single-day yen-buying intervention on April 29, selling 5.92 trillion yen ($40.32 billion) worth of dollars to combat the falling yen. It further sold 3.87 trillion yen worth of dollars on May 1, ministry data showed. 

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was up over 1.5%, while mainland China’s CSI 300 was up 0.3% after Chinese trade figures were released.

Customs data showed on Wednesday that China’s imports in July grew faster-than-expected, while export growth missed forecasts.

Exports in U.S. dollar terms rose by 7% for the month compared to a year ago, missing economists’ expectations for a 9.7% increase. The July growth was also slower than June’s increase of 8.6%.

Meanwhile, U.S. dollar-denominated imports rose by 7.2%, far more than the economist’s forecast of 3.5%. In June, imports had unexpectedly fallen 2.3% amid weak domestic demand.

South Korea’s Kospi jumped 1.83% to end the day at 2,568.41, while the small-cap Kosdaq rose 2.14% to end at 748.54. 

Samsung Electronics spiked about 3.03% after Reuters reported that Samsung’s 8-layer HBM3E chips had cleared tests by American chip major Nvidia for use in its artificial intelligence processors.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 ended 0.25% higher to reach 7,699.8.

—CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng, Hakyung Kim and Samantha Subin contributed to this report.