Analyst recaps Asian stock markets' Monday performance

Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index ended almost flat on Monday while Japan's Nikkei 225 hit its highest close since late October, according to a market analyst.

The Hang Seng Index up 0.03 percent to close at 26,347.24 points on Monday and the benchmark Nikkei stock index, the 225-issue Nikkei Stock Average, ended up 1,493.32 points, or 2.97 percent, from last Tuesday to 51,832.80.

Timothy Pope, a market analyst for China Global Television Network (CGTN), recapped the stock markets' performance.

"It wasn't the first trading day of 2026 for Hong Kong markets. They resumed trade on Friday with a bit of a bang, and today the Hang Seng was fairly tepid, spending the afternoon flat. It closed pretty much flat. The big Chinese oil companies were also among the biggest losers in Hong Kong today. But we did see on Friday a big new listing for an AI company Biren [Technology], which was up 76 percent in its debut after making 700 million of its IPO and there were some great enthusiasm there. The company, though, ended today around two percent lower -- a little bit of pullback after that Thursday exuberance. Chinese automakers were down today in Hong Kong, BYD, Li Auto, Geely and Xiaomi [are] all among the top ten decliners. Now, this is despite the news we got over the weekend that BYD had stolen Tesla's crown as the biggest seller of all electric vehicles for the world for the whole year of 2025. It's the first time that BYD has been on top. But sales have started to slow in recent months. We saw December sales down eight percent compared to last year," he said.

"Over in Japan, we saw the Nikkei 225 surge by three percent to open 2026, with the index hitting its highest close since the end of October. It's above 51,800 points. It was also the biggest single-day jump since October as well. Japan's chip sector was largely mirroring what we saw on Wall Street on Friday, which was a very strong start to the year for all things: semiconductor, AI or data center-related. Tech investor SoftBank was up almost five percent. We saw a chip-making equipment heavyweight Tokyo Electron adding 7.6 percent. And the Japanese market also seemed to largely ignore the whole Venezuela thing, with the exception of a bit of a boost that it gave to Japanese defense stocks. The aerospace company IHI gaining around nine percent. But all in all, around the region today as far as equities were concerned, it was a relatively happy start to the New Year," said Pope.

The U.S. dollar strengthened in late trading on Tuesday.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback against six major peers, went up 0.32 percent to 98.579 at 2000 GMT.

In late New York trading on Tuesday, the euro was down to 1.1690 dollars from 1.1727 dollars in the previous session, and the British pound dropped to 1.3502 dollars from 1.3543 dollars in the previous session.

On the day, the U.S. dollar bought 156.63 Japanese yen, higher than 156.23 Japanese yen in the previous session. The U.S. dollar increased to 0.7954 Swiss francs from 0.7915 Swiss francs, and it increased to 1.3805 Canadian dollars from 1.3757 Canadian dollars. The U.S. dollar increased to 9.1966 Swedish kronor from 9.1749 Swedish kronor.