Hong Kong, a British colony from the 1840s to 1997, grew into an international finance center just off the coast of mainland China.
Anthony Kwan | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Asia-Pacific markets inched higher Friday, with investors awaiting data on China’s property prices to assess any signs of improvement in the debt-laden real estate sector.
Japan stocks were closed for trading on Friday for the Emperor’s Birthday holiday. Japan markets led gains in the previous session, with the Nikkei 225 closing at a new all-time high of 39,098.68, surpassing the previous record of 38,915.87 set in 1989.
Investors will monitor China house prices data for January. At the end of last year, the country’s troubled property market clocked its worst declines in new home prices in nearly nine years.
South Korea’s Kospi gained 0.4%, while the smaller-cap Kosdaq rose 0.2%.
Futures for Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index stood at 16,655, pointing to a lower open compared with the HSI’s close of 16,742.95.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.5%.
Wall Street’s main indexes surged on Thursday, with the S&P 500 hitting a record high after chip giant Nvidia posted quarterly results that far exceeded estimates, boosting the tech sector.
The benchmark index gained 2.11% to close at 5,087.03, its best day since January 2023. The Nasdaq Composite jumped 2.96%, recording its best day since February 2023, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.18%, to close above 39,000 for the first time and at a new high of 39,069.11.
â CNBC’s Pia Singh and Yun Li contributed to this report.