Asia markets mixed as investors parse through earnings

Singapore’s United Overseas Bank posted a first-quarter net profit of 1.47 billion Singapore dollars ($1.08 billion), a 2% fall compared to the same period last year. This however, beat the mean estimate of SG$1.43 billion from analysts polled by LSEG.

Net interest income, a key profitability indicator, eased to 2%, mainly due to lower net interest margins compared with a year ago.

However, UOB highlighted that net fee income grew 5% year over year to SG$580 million, driven by loan-related, wealth management and credit card fees.

The bank, which is Southeast Asia’s third largest, also said its integration with Citigroup’s businesses was “progressing well,” and said it will complete the integration in Vietnam in 2025.

Last year, UOB acquired Citi’s consumer businesses in four ASEAN markets.

— Lim Hui Jie

Shares of Japanese video game company Nintendo slipped almost 4% after the company announced its fourth-quarter results. The company will also announce the successor to its flagship Switch console this fiscal year, according to a Google-translated post on X from the company which quotes Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa.

For the fiscal year ended March 2025, Nintendo forecast net sales of 1.35 trillion yen ($8.72 billion) and net profit of 300 billion yen, representing a 39% year-on-year fall in net profit. That was much lower than what analysts had forecast, according to LSEG estimates.

Nintendo’s fourth-quarter results largely beat analysts expectations, except on revenue. It recorded 277.1 billion Japanese yen in sales versus the 280.6 billion yen expected.

Read the full results story here.

— Lim Hui Jie, Arjun Kharpal

Macroeconomic uncertainties and mounting geopolitical tensions have given gold — the classic “safe haven” asset — a boost.

Gold prices topped $2,400 an ounce in April as tensions in the Middle East escalated. Spot gold is currently trading around 12% higher over the year to date.

Kevin Teng, CEO of wealth manager Wrise Group, said he expects the precious metal to yield substantive returns in the long term, and picked his favorite stocks and ETFs to cash in.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here.

— Amala Balakrishner

U.S. stocks have been rather volatile in the past month, but in the past week they had a strong run on hopes of rate cuts.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average had its fourth consecutive winning session on Monday, and the S&P 500 also climbed for the past four days.

Tech stocks, which would be boosted by rate cuts, have been a big part of that rally — with Meta, Alphabet and Amazon in particular having a strong showing over the past couple of weeks.

Elsewhere, analysts are getting more optimistic on China stocks, especially those in the tech sector.

CNBC Pro screened FactSet for stocks from four exchange-traded funds. Here are eight that turned up on the screen.

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— Weizhen Tan

The rally for stocks tied to China stumbled on Tuesday, with several of the country’s top tech names under pressure.

Shares of JD.com slipped 1.8%, while Alibaba fell nearly 3%. The KraneShares CSI China Internet ETF (KWEB) was down 2.5%, giving back some of its solid year-to-date gains.

The trading action could be a reminder that Chinese stock rallies have proved hard to sustain in the past.

“China ETFs are among the few categories that have seen more net inflows than have current AUM – along with long duration bonds (TLT) and long volatility (VXX). We’d remind investors that the region’s 30-year return is roughly 0%, so timing each side of the trade can be challenging,” Strategas ETF strategist Todd Sohn said in a note to clients Tuesday.

— Jesse Pound

“Sell in May and go away” adages notwithstanding, Strategas market technician Chris Verrone told clients Tuesday that when the S&P 500 starts May in an uptrend — as it is today — stocks have historically produced above-average performance through July. “The opposite is true when beginning this May through July period in a downtrend,” he said.

“As this market continues to gather pace from late-April’s oversold condition and reclaim some key levels (the S&P is back through its 50-day [moving average]), we’d look to seasonality as a tailwind into summer,” Verrone wrote in a note to clients.

Other helpful signs for the market include credit spreads that have narrowed, the VIX Volatility Index returning “to its pre-correction levels,” bank stock indexes at their highest since late March and consumer discretionary stocks doing better relative to consumer staples companies.

— Scott Schnipper

Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari said Tuesday that he expects the central bank to sit tight on interest rates for an extended period, and did not rule out the possibility of a hike if the inflation metrics do not cooperate.

“The most likely scenario is where we are right now, which is, just, we stay put for an extended period of time until we get clarity on is disinflation, in fact, continuing, or has it, in fact, stalled out? I don’t think we know the answer to that,” the central bank official said at the Milken Institute Global Conference.

Interest rate cuts could come if inflation starts heading back to the Fed’s 2% goal, though he said that is not his most likely case. Kashkari said he penciled in two rate cuts at the Fed’s March meeting and would be reassessing when the Federal Open Market Committee updates its “dot plot” in June.

The remarks came the same day he published an essay on the Minneapolis Fed site questioning whether the neutral rate of interest is higher than what the Fed and financial markets think. If inflation holds higher than expected, that could bring a rate hike into play.

“The bar for us raising is quite high, but it is not infinite,” said Kashkari, who is not an FOMC voter this year and will not be until 2026.

— Jeff Cox