Asian stocks ended the session broadly higher on Thursday following a last-minute deal in the States for a short-term increase in the debt ceiling to avert a potentially disastrous default and reopen the government.
Japan's Nikkei Stock Average closed 0.83% higher, while the MSCI's index of Asia-Pacific shares outside of Japan jumped to a new five-month high, up 0.6%. South Korea's Kospi settled up 0.3%, while the S&P/ASX 200 settled up 0.38%.
However, the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index ended the session down 0.21%.
With just hours to go before the US was due to hit its borrowing limit, both the Senate and House of Representatives passed a bill late on Wednesday night to fund the government through to January 15th 2014 and raise the debt ceiling until February 7th. Budget negotiations were also pushed back to December 13th. The bill was passed by the House with a 285-to-144 margin.
Standard & Poor's estimated that the 16-day shutdown had already cost the States $24bn in lost economic activity, which will have a 0.6% adverse impact on gross domestic product growth in the fourth quarter. "The bottom line is the government shut-down has hurt the US economy," the ratings agency said.
Alex Conroy, Financial Sales Trader at Spreadex, said that the agreement "brings a brief respite from weeks of political mud-slinging".
In company news, Kanzai Electric Power rose 2.79% on the news the utility returned to a profit in the first half with pre-tax profit of 31bn yen. Also higher was IT solution group Fujitsu, after it announced the development of a high-sensitivity receiver chip, which it said would "pave the way to high-capacity, gigabit-capable wireless devices".
After revealing that it had won "a more-than-60% share of the contracts in China Mobile's group tender for 100G Optical Transport Networking products for 2013", ZTE Corp. shares climbed almost 3%. China Mobile was also marginally higher.
Over in Europe, markets reacted coolly to the developments on Capitol Hill. Although the worst scenarios have been avoided, markets may well have been expecting something more.
In currencies, the US dollar/Japanese yen pair rose 0.68% to 98.579.
Source: Livecharts
Japan's Nikkei Stock Average closed 0.83% higher, while the MSCI's index of Asia-Pacific shares outside of Japan jumped to a new five-month high, up 0.6%. South Korea's Kospi settled up 0.3%, while the S&P/ASX 200 settled up 0.38%.
However, the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index ended the session down 0.21%.
With just hours to go before the US was due to hit its borrowing limit, both the Senate and House of Representatives passed a bill late on Wednesday night to fund the government through to January 15th 2014 and raise the debt ceiling until February 7th. Budget negotiations were also pushed back to December 13th. The bill was passed by the House with a 285-to-144 margin.
Standard & Poor's estimated that the 16-day shutdown had already cost the States $24bn in lost economic activity, which will have a 0.6% adverse impact on gross domestic product growth in the fourth quarter. "The bottom line is the government shut-down has hurt the US economy," the ratings agency said.
Alex Conroy, Financial Sales Trader at Spreadex, said that the agreement "brings a brief respite from weeks of political mud-slinging".
In company news, Kanzai Electric Power rose 2.79% on the news the utility returned to a profit in the first half with pre-tax profit of 31bn yen. Also higher was IT solution group Fujitsu, after it announced the development of a high-sensitivity receiver chip, which it said would "pave the way to high-capacity, gigabit-capable wireless devices".
After revealing that it had won "a more-than-60% share of the contracts in China Mobile's group tender for 100G Optical Transport Networking products for 2013", ZTE Corp. shares climbed almost 3%. China Mobile was also marginally higher.
Over in Europe, markets reacted coolly to the developments on Capitol Hill. Although the worst scenarios have been avoided, markets may well have been expecting something more.
In currencies, the US dollar/Japanese yen pair rose 0.68% to 98.579.
Source: Livecharts
