Investing.com - Asian stocks posted modest gains in Friday trade, mirroring the uneven performance on Wall Street, as investors reacted to European leader’s announcement of an additional meeting for next week, following this Sunday’s summit to boost the region’s debt bailout fund.
During early Asian trade, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was lifted 0.13% to 17,983.10, Japan’s Nikkei Index added 0.17% to 8,696.99, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 advanced 0.35% to 4,159.60.
The Topix Index of all shares listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, inched up 0.03% to trade at 746.27.
On Thursday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a joint statement from Frankfurt, where the two agreed to meet Saturday in Brussels a day before the scheduled Sunday summit of European leaders.
Sunday’s confab in Brussels has become the focus of investor hopes since officials from the Group of 20 last weekend set the day as a deadline for Europe to devise a concerted action to boost the USD603 billion European Financial Stability Facility rescue fund.
The French and German leaders announced that a “comprehensive and ambitious” response to the debt crisis would emerge this weekend with a second meeting to take place no later than next Wednesday.
The EFSF’s role in containing regional debt contagion appeared to be at the forefront of negotiations, and at USD603 billion, some analysts have doubted whether the fund was large enough to rescue Greece and, potentially, Spain and Italy if necessary.
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Earlier Thursday, the U.S. National Association of Realtors reported that sales of new homes fell less than expected in September to 4.1 million from 5.06 million the previous month. Economist forecasts had predicted a drop to 4.9 million for the period.
And a Thursday report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia showed that manufacturing activity in the state grew in October to a seasonally adjusted 8.7, from minus 17.5 the month before.
Analysts had expected the index, widely viewed as a harbinger of national trends, to fall by 9.5 last month and the data represented the biggest one month turnaround in 31 years.
Wall Street stocks strayed between gains and losses for most of the day before settling mixed; The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.32%, the Nasdaq Composite Index fell 0.21%, and the S&P 500 advanced 0.46%.
Commodity-related issues were among declining issues in early trade, with JFE Holdings Inc. down 1.6%, Nippon Steel Corp. losing 0.5%, and Rio Tinto Ltd. lower by 0.3%.
Automakers across the region fared well, with Mitsubishi Motor Corp. up 1.1%, Mazda Motor Corp. higher by 1.3% and Hyundai Motor Co. gaining 0.5%.
Panasonic Inc. gained 2.3% after a report that the electronics leader was abandoning plans to convert one of its plasma television production facilities into a solar panel plant.
The outlook for European stocks was optimistic. France’s CAC 40 futures was higher by 0.34% to 3,103.20, Britain’s FTSE 100 futures added 0.17% to 5,392.70, while Germany’s DAX futures rose 0.21% to 5,799.30.
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