A man wearing a protective face mask talks on his cellphone in front of a screen showing the Nikkei index outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan. Picture: REUTERS/ATHIT PERAWONGMETHA
The signing of the American Rescue Plan provided a further boost to market sentiment after the European Central Bank said it was ready to accelerate money printing to keep a lid on borrowing costs, using its €1.85-trillion pandemic emergency purchase programme more generously over the coming months to stop any unwarranted rise in debt financing costs.
MSCI’s broadest gauge index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan gained 0.45% on Friday morning, supported by tech gains.Japan’s Nikkei rose 0.99%, but China’s blue-chip CSI300 index lost 0.43% as that country’s high-valuation tech and consumer firms dragged. Sentiment was also boosted by weekly jobless claims data, which pointed to a recovering US labour market as vaccine rollouts helped lead to economic reopenings.