(Bloomberg) — Asian stocks were primed to begin the New Year on a sour note after an inauspicious end to an otherwise stellar 2024 for global equity investors.
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The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indexes dropped for a fourth consecutive session in a year-end pullback that shaved more than a trillion dollars from large-cap market values. Futures on benchmarks in Shanghai and Sydney declined and mainland Chinese gauges tumbled in December’s final day of trading.
While most Asian shares were expected to fall Thursday, futures showed Hong Kong’s benchmark may edge higher. Japanese markets are closed through Jan. 6. New Zealand remains on holiday, while South Korea will have a late open.
Energy markets will be watched as trading resumes Thursday after Russian gas stopped flowing to Europe via Ukraine, closing off a route that’s operated for five decades. Both sides confirmed the halt Wednesday after a key transit deal expired.
Oil prices rose on the last day of 2024 to close out a flat performance for the year as the market braced for a global surplus in 2025. A broad gauge of Treasuries eked out an annual gain in 2024, albeit a smaller one than in 2023. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index had its best year in nearly a decade.
In other news over the New Year period, Nippon Steel Corp. offered to give the US government a veto over any reduction in US Steel Corp.’s production capacity in a last-ditch effort to win President Joe Biden’s approval for its takeover of the American company. Shares of US Steel surged by the most in a year.
In China, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. agreed to sell its shares in Sun Art Retail Group Ltd. to private equity firm DCP Capital, unloading a high-profile physical commerce asset to focus on its core online business. Meanwhile, China’s BYD Co. reported a year-end surge to push total sales to 4.25 million passenger cars last year.
At a macroeconomic level, the world’s second-largest economy is expected to expand around 5% for the full year of 2024, President Xi Jinping said.
Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said the country’s economy performed better than expected in 2024. Gross domestic product expanded 4%, Wong said in his New Year’s message. That beat the trade ministry’s November forecast for an expansion of around 3.5%.
Meanwhile, South Korea’s political crisis continued, with Acting President Choi Sang-mok on Wednesday rejecting an attempt by his advisers to resign en masse.