Asia markets mostly lower after investors assess Australia inflation data – CNBC

Japan Consumer Confidence Index The index fell to 36.2 in May from 38.3 in April, continuing a decline since February and reaching its lowest level since November.

The majority of survey respondents expect prices to rise over the next 12 months, with 93.5% of households saying so — up 0.5 percentage points from the previous month.

Meanwhile, 2.6% of respondents expect prices to remain roughly stable, while 1.8% said prices will fall over the next 12 months.

Lim Hui Jie

Samsung Electronics Labor Union The company has announced that it will go on strike on June 7, marking the first time in the company’s history that workers will choose to stop working.

The Samsung Electronics National Union, known in South Korea as Zensamro, represents around 28,000 workers, more than a fifth of the electronics giant’s workforce.

The strike comes amid a deadlock in wage negotiations between the union and South Korea’s major IT companies that have been ongoing since January.

Samsung shares fell 1.16% on Wednesday.

Lim Hui Jie

Australian consumer prices rose in April, official data showed. YoY: 3.6%It was better than I expected.

The April weighted consumer price index beat the 3.4% increase forecast in a Reuters poll and also beat the 3.5% increase in the CPI for March.

“Inflation has remained relatively stable over the past five months, but this is the second consecutive month that the annual inflation rate has risen slightly,” said Michelle Marquardt, head of price statistics at the Bank of England. Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The data showed the biggest factors driving increases in April were the prices of housing, food, non-alcoholic beverages, alcohol, tobacco and transport.

Shreyasi Sanyal

Singtel shares were briefly halted in trading early on Wednesday before trading resumed.

The Singaporean telecommunications company issued a statement: Reuters reports The paper claimed Singtel has partnered with investment firm KKR to acquire a minority stake in one of Asia’s largest data center providers.

In a filing with the Singapore Stock Exchange, SingTel said: The company said it “regularly reviews and reviews business opportunities, projects and proposals relevant to its business and is in discussions with various parties from time to time.”

Singtel noted that “there can be no certainty that any transaction will result from these discussions or that any definitive or binding agreements will be entered into pursuant to these discussions.”

A Reuters article, citing people familiar with the matter, said the SingTel-KKR consortium has emerged as the front-runner to acquire a 20 percent minority stake in STT Telemedia Global Data Centres for $1 billion.

The consortium is competing with New York-based alternative investment firm Stonepeak for a stake, and a deal could be signed or announced as soon as early June, one of the people said.

Lim Hui Jie

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note reached 1.097%, the highest level in nearly 13 years.

The last time the 10-year JGB yield reached this level was in 2011, before the Bank of Japan launched its yield curve control policy in 2016.

Since the Bank of Japan abolished the YCC policy, which had set a cap on government bond yields at around 1%, in March, yields on 10-year government bonds have been on the rise.

Lim Hui Jie

Investor favorite Nvidia is back in the spotlight after its earnings last week beat expectations on the back of an artificial intelligence boom.

Morgan Stanley said the reaction to Nvidia’s first-quarter results “gives a good indication of how much buying power still exists in the market.”

“With AI still far from peaking, this should be enough to maintain investor confidence in Asian AI supply chain stocks,” analysts at the investment bank wrote in a May 22 research note.

They list several Overweight-rated stocks that reflect their favorite AI themes, including four that they believe have upside potential of 50% or more.

CNBC Pro subscribers can find more details here.

Amala Balakrishner

For many investors, the million-dollar question is how far Nvidia can grow, or whether it can sustain its dramatic growth.

Nick Griffin, chief investment officer at Munro Partners, has been an Nvidia investor since 2019, but even he’s surprised by the company’s incredible run-up in stock prices so far.

“We’ve never seen anything like this before in terms of the dramatic revenue acceleration that the company is demonstrating. We’ve never seen anything like this before at a company of this size, it’s unprecedented,” he said Tuesday.

CNBC Pro subscribers can find more details here.

Wei-Jen Tan

With stocks hitting record highs, now may be the time to adopt a more neutral stance, according to RBC Capital Markets. Indeed, the Wall Street firm is concerned that its bias toward stocks may turn to the downside if current views on markets and the economy prove overly optimistic.

“Our S&P 500 valuation model continues to suggest that the overall U.S. equity market is fairly valued, but there is some downside risk if current inflation, interest rate and Fed assumptions are too optimistic,” Lori Calvasina wrote on Tuesday.

“In order to mathematically justify a significant market upside by the end of the year, I think investors need to start looking at the outlook for 2025, which still looks somewhat limited,” Calvasina added.

Sarah Min

Although commodity inflation has fallen recently, Torsten Slok believes investors need to be more vigilant about resilient super-core inflation.

Core inflation, which excludes food, energy and home prices, is starting to accelerate again, boosted by the services sector, said Apollo Global Management’s chief economist. This increase in inflation, combined with a stronger outlook for the housing market, could be a drag on investors who are betting the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates this year.

“Housing might be a little bit harder for the Fed to control, but what they can control is broader consumption. Consumption is still pretty strong and that’s the challenge for the Fed going forward,” he said Tuesday on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Streets.”

While Slock did not explicitly predict a rate hike this year, he agreed with Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari’s assessment that investors cannot necessarily rule out the possibility of a rate hike.

— Lisa Kailai Han

Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari told CNBC on Tuesday that the bank isn’t ready to cut interest rates yet.

“If we continue to see positive inflation data over the coming months, I think we can be more confident that a rate cut would be appropriate,” he said, adding that the central bank could raise rates if inflation continues to fail to ease. “I don’t think we should rule anything out at this point.”

Fred Imbert