Asian shares rose on Wednesday, whereas the dollar dipped, just ahead of the policy decision by the Federal Reserve. Many hope this Federal policy decision may hint at a slowdown in the rate hikes in the upcoming days.
Federal Policy Decision
The U.S. central bank will raise interest rates by 75 basis points after it concludes the two-day policy meeting on Wednesday. However, investors will look for signs from the Fed of tapering the size of rate hikes in the future.
The investors will scrutinize the Fed policy statement and the remarks by Jerome Powell, the Fed Chair, to look for any signal suggesting a potential slowdown in the rate hikes by the policymakers.
Stocks from Different Countries
Chinese shares also led gains as the country hopes to ease its COVID-Zero policy before the year ends.
Shanghai Composite index, known to be the benchmark for Chinese stocks, jumped to 2,969.20, up by 2.62 percent amid factory activity within the country seemed to be better, as shown in the Caixin PMI data, than expected.
Hang Deng index of Hong Kong also surged by 5.23 percent and reached 15,455.27, although the third quarter’s GDP data remained weak with the worst economic situation in two years.
Chinese Yuan earlier went down to the lowest against the dollar in fifteen years.
As Panasonic Holdings and Japan Tobacco gained positively, the Japanese stocks saw moderate gains. Toyota Motor, however, dropped by almost 2 percent when they posted about their weaker earnings.
In the case of Seoul stocks, chemical and technology shares did the job of gaining positively.
The Australian markets closed higher in seven weeks after the country’s central bank started to go slow on interest rates.
