Asia stocks close higher except Japan, Europe indices hit new records

By Ovunc Kutlu

ANKARA (AA) – Major stock markets in Asia recovered Wednesday from their losses in previous session to end higher except Japan, while two major European indices hit new record highs.

Asia Dow, which includes blue-chip companies in the region, rose 17 points, or 0.46%, to close at 3,882.

Hang Seng, the benchmark for blue-chip stocks trading on the Hong Kong stock exchange, added 231 points, or 0.88%, to 26,426, while China's Shanghai stock exchange was up 29, or 0.85%, to 3,477 points.

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 stock exchange, on the other hand, declined 57, or 0.21%, to 27,584 points.

The decline in Nikkei 225 came amid the rising cases of the Delta variant of the coronavirus in the country and investors taking a sell-off position in Toyota shares to take advantage of Japanese automaker's strong earnings in second quarter.

All four indexes in Asia closed lower Tuesday with losses between 0.16% and 0.5%.

In Europe, indexes have continued to increase after gains on Monday and Tuesday, despite German lender Commerzbank's earnings disappointed.

The bank had a €478 million $(567 million) loss in the second quarter, down from €211 million in the same quarter of last year. Revenue fell 18% to €1.86 billion from €2.27 billion.

STOXX Europe 600, which includes around 90% of the market capitalization of the European market in 17 European countries, was up 0.6% to 468.18 points at 1010GMT. The French stock market, CAC 40, rose 0.63% to 6,766. Both indexes hit their all-time highs earlier with 468.39 and 6,766.61 points, respectively.

London's FTSE 100 increased 0.4% to 7,134 points, and Germany's DAX 30 soared 0.87% to 15,690 at that time.

While Italy's Borsa Italiana FTSE MIB 30 gained 0.57% at 25,430, Spain's IBEX 35 was almost flat at 8,774.

European indices closed Tuesday higher except Germany.