Asia-Pacific shares are mostly trading higher ahead of the US inflation report
Pedestrians at the shops at Pitt Street Mall in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, Monday, December 26, 2022.
Brent Lewin | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Asia-Pacific shares were mostly trading higher as investors looked ahead to the US consumer price index, which would set the Federal Reserve̵[ads1]7;s path in trying to tackle inflation after raising interest rates seven times in 2022.
Economists polled by Reuters expected the core CPI to rise 0.3% on a monthly basis, which would mark the lowest reading since September 2021, Refinitiv data showed.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.7% ahead of the November inflation pressures release. The Nikkei 225 traded up 0.84% and the Topix up 0.7%.
The Kospi rose 0.71% even as South Korea’s unemployment rate for December rose to 3.3% from November’s 2.9%, the highest in 11 months. The Kosdaq rose 1.04 percent.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 0.83% in the first hour of trading. Mainland China’s Shanghai Composite rose fractionally and the Shenzhen component was down 0.24%
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.35%.
Overnight on Wall Street, major stock indexes closed higher as investors continued to build on the new year’s early rally. Fed chairman Jerome Powell emphasized in a speech the importance of the central bank’s independence from political influence, without giving a direct indication of where monetary policy is headed.