Asian stocks higher as Washington chaos fails to dislodge recovery bets

January 07, 2020: Asian stock markets rose on Thursday (January 7) in anticipation of a big borrowing and big-spending Democrat administration driving growth, following runoff elections that gave the party control of both houses of U.S. Congress.

Japan's Nikkei rose 2% to its highest since 1990. S&P 500 futures rose 0.6% and Nasdaq 100 futures rose 0.9% as markets seemed to shake off a late New York session fade when chaotic protests in Washington unnerved traders.

In South Korea, the benchmark KOSPI opened up 54.41 points, or 1.83% at 3,022.62 points as of 0056GMT.

Meanwhile, a U.S. crackdown on Chinese companies appears to be deepening, with sources telling Reuters that the Trump administration is considering extending investment bans to tech giants Alibaba 9988.HK, BABA.N, and Tencent 0700.HK.

Shares in both fell about 3% in Hong Kong and shares in three Chinese telecom firms that the New York Stock Exchange has eventually decided to remove after a week of flip-flopping also fell heavily.

Hong Kong's benchmark Hang Seng Index dropped to 27, 683.30 as of 0135GMT. Shanghai Composite Index started roughly flat at 3552.91 points by rising 2.03 points.

Reuters