Hong Kong's Hang Seng index surges 2% as Chinese tech stocks bounce

SINGAPORE — Shares in Asia-Pacific rose in Wednesday morning trade, with stocks in Hong Kong leading gains regionally.

In early trading on Wednesday, the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong soared 2.06% as Chinese tech stocks bounced back from their Tuesday losses. Shares of Alibaba jumped 6.12% while Tencent gained 2.09% and Netease advanced 5.59%.

Mainland Chinese stocks also traded in positive territory, with the Shanghai composite up 0.15% and the Shenzhen component rising 0.438%.

In Japan, the Nikkei 225 gained 0.83% while the Topix index climbed 0.8%. Shares of SoftBank Group surged 5.34% after the Japanese conglomerate on Tuesday announced plans to take Arm public following the collapse of a planned sale of the unit to Nvidia.

Elsewhere, the S&P/ASX 200 in Australia climbed 0.34% as bank stocks jumped: Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) surged 5.05%, Westpac gained 2.4%, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group advanced 1.19% while National Australia Bank rose 0.94%.

CBA on Monday announced a jump in its first-half profit and also a share buy-back worth 2 billion Australian dollars ($1.43 billion).

South Korea’s Kospi also advanced 0.83%.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan traded 1.08% higher.

Overnight stateside, the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 371.65 points to 35,462.78 while the S&P 500 advanced 0.84% to 4,521.54. The Nasdaq Composite jumped 1.28% to about 14,194.46.