Japan’s Nikkei tops 33,000 points; Asian markets rise ahead of Fed meeting

Japan’s Nikkei 225 topped 33,000 points for the first time since July 1990, passing a key psychological level as Japanese stocks continue their bull run.

Battery maker GS Yuasa rose 5.97%, leading the index higher, and chipmaker Renesas Electronics rose 5.88%.

SoftBank Group rose 5.59% and Toyota Motor rose more than 5% while Mazda rose 4.1[ads1]2%.

Michael Yoshikami, founder of Destination Wealth Management, says that’s especially so because technology companies are “starting to move forward in terms of manufacturing in India.”

– Lee Ying Shan

Gene Seroka, executive director of the port, says cargo is moving “pretty smoothly,” although some truckers and port customers are experiencing delays.

– Audrey Wan

India’s consumer price index has registered a year-on-year increase of 4.25% in May, marking the lowest rate of inflation since January 2021.

This was lower than April’s figure of 4.7% and also lower than the 4.42% expected by economists polled by Reuters.

Government data showed that prices of clothing and footwear had the highest increase of 6.64% in May, followed by housing prices, which rose 4.84%.

– Lim Hui Jie

Analysts have singled out a group of companies that will benefit from interest rates staying higher for longer: those that are cash-rich and have strong balance sheets.

Although the US central bank is expected to stop the increases this week, there are fears that it will resume them afterwards. That’s because of factors like inflation being stickier than it looks and a labor market that continues to be tight.

CNBC Pro surveyed the S&P 500 and MSCI World indexes to look for such cash-rich stocks. One popped up on the screen with nearly 80% potential upside, and two other semiconductor stocks — popular with investors right now — also popped up.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here.

— Weizhen Tan

Jonathan Zhu of Bain Capital discusses the company’s offer to take the Chinese data center operator private in a deal that values ​​it at nearly $3 billion.

– Sheila Chiang

Nvidia, a dominant player in the artificial intelligence computing market, may face increasing competition from custom chip designers in the near future, according to Morgan Stanley.

“Budget costs and energy requirements are the two major constraints on future AI computing, in our view,” Morgan Stanley analysts led by Charlie Chan said in a June 11 note to clients.

“We therefore expect to see increasingly energy-efficient and affordable AI-enabled chip designs going forward, matching or even surpassing the growth of NVIDIA’s and AMD’s mainstream GPUs.”

The investment bank is “overweight” five global stocks that could benefit from this trend.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here.

– Ganesh Rao

Lee Woon Shiu, DBS Bank’s group head of wealth planning, says “the family office proposal is … the most important game changer to come out of Singapore in the last five years in the wealth management space.”

– Lim Hui Jie

Shares closed higher on Monday as investors increased optimism that the central bank could skip a rate hike at its board meeting this week.

The S&P 500 added 0.93% to close at 4,338.93, while the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.53% to end the day at 13,461.92. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 189.55 points, or 0.56%, to close at 34,066.33.

Investors will also look to fresh inflation data this week, with the consumer price index for May due out on Tuesday.

-Brian Evans

It’s a relatively quiet day on Wall Street as investors look ahead to the Federal Reserve meeting set for midweek.

Just over 31.5 million shares of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, a tracker of the broad S&P 500 index, have changed hands as of 2 p.m. ET with just two hours left in the trading day. On an average full day over the last 30 sessions, around 80.6 million shares were traded.

The low volume underscores the typical calm-before-the-storm period seen in early weeks with a Fed meeting on the agenda. Investors will watch Wednesday’s announcement and press conference for any changes to the rate hikes and comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell on the state of the economy and future monetary policy.

Before that, consumer price index data due on Tuesday will also be watched due to the link with inflation.

– Alex Harring

Tailwinds from improvements in delivery may be limited by increased competition for the electric car manufacturer Nio, according to Nomura.

Analyst Frank Fan initiated coverage of the China-based automaker’s stock at neutral. His $7.50 price target suggests U.S. publicly traded stocks will fall about 3% over the next year from where they closed Friday’s session.

“We believe the company is on track to improve deliveries in 2H23F,” Fan said in a note to clients on Sunday, also calling first-quarter deliveries “lackluster”. “That said, we expect NIO’s implied upside to be limited by intensified competition and limited market share improvement in 2023F, based on the company’s 2023 guidance for shipments vs. the overall EV industry growth outlook.”

Fan’s price target implies further downside for the stock, which has already fallen more than 14% this year.

On Monday, the company cut prices and ended free battery replacements for new buyers despite management saying earlier this year that the company would not enter the “price war” for electric vehicles. US stocks rose more than 7% in Monday’s session.