Asian stocks rose, trimming a monthly loss, after economic data from South Korea to Taiwan signaled the global slowdown may be easing. The won touched a 13-month high, while metals rallied before U.S. equity markets reopen today in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index added 0.7 percent at 3:21 p.m. Tokyo time. The Nikkei 225 Stock Average increased 1 percent, while futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index advanced 0.1 percent. South Korea’s currency added 0.1 percent as Asian currencies headed for a fifth straight monthly advance. Copper climbed 0.9 percent and oil rose 0.3 percent in New York.
South Korea’s industrial production increased for the first time in four months, Taiwan resumed growth last quarter and Singapore’s jobless rate fell. Euro-area finance ministers will hold a conference call today to discuss ways to fill Greece’s financing gap and allay investor concern the country may need to exit the euro. The New York Stock Exchange plans to re-open after being shut for two days as the 900-mile wide storm caused flooding and blackouts.
“The underlying economic data is improving and supportive of future earnings as long as nothing else goes wrong,” said Angus Gluskie, Sydney-based managing director at White Funds Management, which oversees more than $350 million.
Less than two stocks rose for each one that fell on MSCI’s Asian gauge, with measures tracking consumer discretionary companies and materials producers advancing the most. The index has lost 0.4 percent this month.
Company Earnings
Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., the maker of Subaru cars, jumped 6.9 percent in Tokyo and reached the highest level in 11 years after lifting its annual profit forecast 40 percent on better-than-expected U.S. sales. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., the largest bank by market value, gained 1.4 percent in Hong Kong after income rose 15 percent to a record.
PetroChina Co., the world’s biggest publicly traded oil producer, was the biggest drag on the Asian gauge, losing 3.7 percent. The company posted its lowest third-quarter profit in at least five years because of refining losses and natural-gas import costs.
The won appreciated for a fifth day, advancing 0.1 percent to 1,090.70 per dollar. The currency touched 1,090 earlier, the strongest level since Sept. 13, 2011, and rallied 1.9 percent this month. The New Zealand dollar strengthened 0.1 percent to 82.19 U.S. cents, while the Australian dollar added 0.1 percent to $1.0379.
Currencies Rally
The Bloomberg-JPMorgan Asia Dollar Index, which tracks the region’s 10 most-active currencies excluding the yen, has gained 0.6 percent in October after the U.S., Europe and Japan stepped up measures last quarter to spur their economies.
Gross domestic product in Taiwan grew 1.02 percent from a year earlier, after a 0.18 percent decline the previous quarter, a report showed today, while South Korean output rose 0.8 percent last month from August, the statistics office said. Singapore’s unemployment rate eased to 1.9 percent, the lowest since the first quarter of 2011.
Australian home-building approvals surged for a second straight month in September, a sign housing demand is accelerating after the central bank cut interest rates. The number of permits granted to build or renovate houses and apartments gained 7.8 percent from August, a report showed today. New Zealand home-building approvals rose last month to the highest level in more than four years.
U.S. 10-year rates rose one basis point, or 0.01 percentage point, to 1.74 percent.
U.S. Housing
The S&P/Case-Shiller Index of property values in 20 U.S. cities rose 2 percent in August from a year earlier, after a 1.2 percent advance in July. The average estimate by economists in a Bloomberg survey had called for a 1.9 percent increase.
American equity markets were closed for two days, the first consecutive shutdowns because of weather in more than a century. The last comparable closure of the NYSE was on March 12 and 13, 1888, when a blizzard dumped 21 inches of snow on New York, according to the company’s website.
Sandy may cut economic output by $25 billion in the fourth quarter, according to Gregory Daco, a U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts. He said that could reduce the fourth quarter pace of growth to between 1 percent and 1.5 percent, from the firm’s earlier estimate of 1.6 percent.
Copper for delivery in three months gained 0.9 percent to $7,792.25 a metric ton. Aluminum, nickel, tin, zinc and lead also advanced at least 0.6 percent. Crude for December delivery rose 0.3 percent to $85.96 a barrel, paring its biggest monthly decline since May.
Figures due tomorrow may show a manufacturing gauge based on a survey of purchasing managers in China, the world’s second biggest economy, climbed to 50.2 this month from 49.8 in September, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.
To contact the reporters on this story: Richard Frost in Hong Kong at rfrost4@bloomberg.net; Adam Haigh in Sydney at ahaigh1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Poole at jpoole4@bloomberg.net
