China markets open higher as investors digest property price data

Asia-Pacific markets inched higher Friday as investors digested China property price data.

The CSI 300 index was 0.4% higher at the open, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index added 0.7%.

Data showed sales prices of newly built commercial housing in first-tier cities fell 0.3% month-over-month in January, with declines narrowing by 0.1 percentage points from the previous month.

At the end of last year, the country’s troubled property market clocked its worst declines in new home prices in nearly nine years.

Wall Street’s main indexes surged on Thursday, with the S&P 500 hitting a record high after chip giant Nvidia posted quarterly results that far exceeded estimates, boosting the tech sector.

The benchmark index gained 2.11% to close at 5,087.03, its best day since January 2023. The Nasdaq Composite jumped 2.96%, recording its best day since February 2023, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.18%, to close above 39,000 for the first time and at a new high of 39,069.11.

— CNBC’s Pia Singh and Yun Li contributed to this report.