Asia markets rise as Wall Street lifted by hopes of debt ceiling deal

Shares of Chinese tech giant Tencent in Hong Kong have slid over 3% even as the company reported an 11% jump in quarterly revenue to 150 billion Chinese yuan ($21.4 billion)

This marked its fastest growth in more than a year, as the company saw a big rebound in payment volumes, ad sales, and gaming.

Net profit climbed 10% to 25.8 billion yuan, lower than than the 31 billion yuan expected by economists polled by Reuters.

— Lim Hui Jie, Ryan Browne

Japanese markets extended their winning streak on Thursday, with the Nikkei 225 leading gains in the region and continuing to trade above the 30,000 mark.

The Topix maintained levels not seen since August 1990.

Energy and technology stocks led the Topix, with its top gainers being Sony and electronics company Tokyo Electron.

Meanwhile, Factset revealed that electronics stocks powered the Nikkei, with the top gainer on the index being semiconductor test equipment manufacturer Advantest, followed by Tokyo Electron.

— Lim Hui Jie

Nomura downgraded its China full-year growth forecast from 5.9% to 5.5%, according to a Wednesday note.

“China’s post-Covid recovery has been rapidly losing steam,” Nomura’s Ting Lu wrote, noting that the latest activity data and high frequency data in May show the momentum has been losing steam “due partly to weak confidence among consumers and business investors.”

“As disappointment kicks in, we see a rising risk of slower activity growth, rising unemployment, persistent disinflation, falling market interest rates, and a weaker currency,” he wrote.

Nomura added that it is also cutting its 2024 full-year gross domestic product forecast for China from 4.4% to 4.2%. It now expects the second quarter’s GDP to grow 7.8%, third quarter to grow 4.9%, and the final quarter of the year to grow 5.0%.

– Jihye Lee

Japan’s trade deficit has narrowed by almost half in April, falling to 432.41 billion from 854.93 billion a year ago.

Most notably, imports fell by 2.3% year on year, more than the 0.3% expected by economists polled by Reuters.

Exports came in largely in line with expectations, rising 2.6% year-on-year compared to the 3% expected.

— Lim Hui Jie

New Zealand’s producer price index rose by 0.3% in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the final quarter of 2022, government data showed.

Input producer price index rose 0.2% – with the farm expenses price index rising0.7% and capital goods price index climbing 1%.

The New Zealand dollar slightly strengthened to 0.6242 against the U.S. dollar.

– Jihye Lee

Nvidia, the company behind the most powerful chips used to enable artificial intelligence (A.I.), has the potential to increase its stock value by five times within the next ten years, according to investor and fund manager Philip Ripman.

Investor enthusiasm for Nvidia is centered around its business model of selling high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs) essential for running the complex algorithms behind artificial intelligence technologies. As A.I. has become increasingly important across industries, demand for GPUs has surged.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read more Ripman’s views on Nvidia here.

— Ganesh Rao

The year is nearing its halfway mark, and global stocks have been doing much better than they had in volatile 2022.

Many stocks have soared and beaten the overall market, but there’s still more room for investor bullishness.

CNBC Pro screened for stocks that are beating the market nearly halfway into the year — and that analysts love. One’s a Buffett favorite, and another two are top picks by BofA and Citi.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here.

— Weizhen Tan

Montana became the first U.S. state to impose a…