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Bangkok – Asian stocks rose on Monday, but most markets were closed for the Lunar New Year holiday, with markets in Shanghai closed for the week.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index rose 1.1% to 26,852.85 and Sydney’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.1% to 7,456.90. Gains followed Friday’s rally in tech stocks countering fears of a weakening US economy.
Elsewhere, US benchmark crude fell 35 cents to $81.29 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices rose from $1.03 to $81.64 a barrel on Friday.
Internationally traded price benchmark Brent crude fell 40 cents to $87.23 a barrel.
The US dollar fell from 129.59 yen to 129.14 yen. The euro rose from $1.0868 to $1.0905.
On Friday, the S&P 500 rose 1.9% to 3,972.61. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1% to 33,375.49. The Nasdaq closed his 2.7% higher at 11,140.43.
Small business stocks also posted solid gains. The Russell 2000 Index rose his 1.7% to close at 1,867.34.
Despite the gains, the benchmark index closed with its first weekly loss in the last three weeks.
Technology and telecom-services stocks underpinned much of the gains, as investors welcomed a big quarterly surge in Netflix subscribers.
Tech stocks were a big part of Friday’s S&P 500 rally. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, said it was cutting costs by laying off 12,000 employees. Shares rose 5.3%.
Netflix reported a surge in subscribers and its stock jumped 8.5%.
The major indices started the week in the red, largely due to fears that the economy could not avoid a scarring recession. Some reports on the economy were weaker than expected as the effects of last year’s rate hike by the US Federal Reserve (Fed) began to seep through the system.
On Friday, Fed President Christopher Waller said he would support a rate hike of just 0.4 percentage points on Feb. 1 when the central bank makes its next rate policy update. Waller also said interest rates were already high enough to slow the economy. The remarks may have helped calm market fears of rising interest rates.
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