BANGKOK (AP) — World shares were mostly higher on Wednesday ahead of a keenly anticipated quarterly profit report by Nvidia and an update on the state of the U.S. economy.
Germany's DAX rose 1.3% to 22,696.44, while the CAC 40 in Paris jumped 1.1% to 8,163.84. Britain's FTSE 100 gained 0.6% to 8,716.51.
The future for the S&P 500 was up 0.5%, while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.3%.
The U.S. Commerce Department was due to issue its third and final estimate of how the U.S. economy performed in the fourth quarter of 2024 later in the day. The economy still appears to be in solid shape, and growth is continuing at the moment. But recently, weaker than expected economic reports have siphoned away some of the momentum that took Wall Street to repeated records in recent months.
“What was supposed to be a soft-landing narrative is quickly turning into a hard dose of reality,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a report. “The U.S. economic backdrop is shifting sharply lower, a stark contrast to the euphoria that defined the start of ’25. And now, investors are scrambling to adjust their positioning on the fly,” he said.
In Asian trading, Chinese markets led gains, lifted by strong buying of technology shares.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng jumped 3.4% to 23,811.21, while the Shanghai Composite index added 0.8% to 3,372.74.
Hong Kong-traded shares in food delivery company Meituan surged 9.8%, while e-commerce giant Alibaba gained 4.8%. Gaming and technology company Tencent Holdings advanced 3.4% and search engine and AI company Baidu was up 3.3%.
Such companies have regained some strength as Beijing has indicated stronger support for the private sector after years of crackdowns on tech companies.
Elsewhere in the region, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index shed 0.3% to 38,142.37. Big Japanese trading companies slipped following gains driven by billionaire Warren Buffett's disclosure in his annual letter to shareholders that he increased Berkshire Hathaway's investments in those companies.
The Kospi in Seoul rose 0.4% to 2,641.09.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gave up 0.1% to 8,240.70. In Taiwan, the Taiex gained 0.5%. Thailand's SET was up 0.9%.
On Tuesday, some of Wall Street’s brightest stars lost more of their shine after a report said U.S. households are getting more pessimistic about the economy.
The S&P 500 fell 0.5%. The Nasdaq composite sank 1.4% and the Dow industrials added 0.4%.
Tesla tumbled 8.4%, while Nvidia fell 2.8%. The chip maker is due Wednesday to release its first earnings report since a Chinese upstart, DeepSeek, upended the artificial-intelligence industry by saying it has developed a large language model that can compete with big U.S. rivals without having to use the most expensive chips.
That has called into question all the spending Wall Street had assumed would go into not only Nvidia’s chips but also the ecosystem that’s built around the AI boom, including electricity to power large data centers.
But for the first time since June, a measure of consumers’ expectations for the economy in the short term fell below a threshold that usually signals a recession ahead, according to The Conference Board. The increase in pessimism was broad-based and carried across both higher- and lower-income households, as well as older and younger ones.
Wall Street tracks consumer confidence because strong spending is what helps keep stave off recession. And Tuesday’s report echoed what an earlier report from the University of Michigan suggested: Consumers see the current situation as OK, but they’re worried about the future.
In other dealings early Wednesday, Bitcoin was trading at about $89,000.
U.S. benchmark crude oil was unchanged at $68.93 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, dropped $1.60 to $72.45 per barrel.
The dollar rose to 149.34 Japanese yen from 149.03 yen. The euro slipped to $1.0495 from $1.0515.
