Japan’s Nikkei tops 33,000 points; Asia markets rise ahead of Fed meeting

Japan’s Nikkei 225 topped 33,000 points for the first time since July 1990, passing a key psychological level as Japanese stocks continue their bull run.

Battery manufacturer GS Yuasa rose 5.97%, leading gains in the index, and chipmaker Renesas Electronics rose 5.88%.

SoftBank Group rose 5.59% and Toyota Motor rose by more than 5% while Mazda gained 4.12%.

Michael Yoshikami, founder of Destination Wealth Management, says that’s particularly because tech companies are “starting to move forward in terms of manufacturing in India.”

Gene Seroka, executive director of the seaport, says cargo is moving “pretty smoothly,” though some truckers and port customers are experiencing delays.

India ‘s consumer price index has recorded a 4.25% gain year on year in May, marking its slowest rate of inflation since January 2021.

This was lower than April’s figure of 4.7% and also lower than the 4.42% expected by economists polled by Reuters.

Government data showed that prices of clothing and footwear saw the highest increase of 6.64% in May, followed by prices of housing, which increased 4.84%.

— Lim Hui Jie

Analysts have singled out a group of companies that will benefit from interest rates staying higher for longer: those that are rich in cash and have strong balance sheets.

Though the U.S. Federal Reserve is expected to pause hikes this week, there are fears it’s set to resume them after. That’s because of factors such as inflation being stickier than it looks, and a labor market that continues to be tight.

CNBC Pro screened the S&P 500 and MSCI World indexes to look for such cash-rich stocks. One showed up in the screen with nearly 80% potential upside, and another two semiconductor stocks — popular with investors right now — also appeared.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here.

— Weizhen Tan

Jonathan Zhu of Bain Capital discusses the company’s offer to take the Chinese data center operator private in a deal valuing it at nearly $3 billion.

Nvidia, a dominant player in the artificial intelligence computing market, may face increasing competition from custom chip designers in the near future, according to Morgan Stanley.

“Budget costs and energy requirements are the two major limitations for future AI computing, in our view,” said Morgan Stanley analysts led by Charlie Chan in a note to clients on June 11.

“We therefore expect to see increasingly energy-efficient and low-cost AI custom chip designs ahead, matching or even outpacing the growth of NVIDIA’s and AMD’s general purpose GPUs.”

The investment bank is “overweight” on five global stocks that could benefit from this trend.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here.

— Ganesh Rao

Lee Woon Shiu, DBS Bank’s group head of wealth planning, says “the family office proposition is … the most important game changer to come out of Singapore in the last five years in the wealth management space.”

Stocks closed higher on Monday as investors added to optimism that the central bank could skip a rate hike at their policy meeting this week.

The S&P 500 added 0.93% to close at 4,338.93, while the Nasdaq Composite popped 1.53% to finish the day at 13,461.92. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 189.55 points, or 0.56%, to close at 34,066.33.

Investors will also look toward fresh inflation data this week, with the consumer price index for May due out Tuesday.

— Brian Evans

It’s a relatively quiet day on Wall Street as investors look to the Federal Reserve meeting set for the middle of the week.

Just over 31.5 million shares of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, a tracker of the broad S&P 500 index, have exchanged hands as of 2 p.m. ET with just two hours left in the trading day. In an average full day over the last 30 sessions, about 80.6 million shares were traded.

That low volume underscores the typical calm-before-the-storm period seen early in weeks with a Fed meeting on the docket. Investors will watch Wednesday’s announcement and press conference for any changes to the path of interest rate hikes and commentary from Fed Chair Jerome Powell around the state of the economy and future monetary policy.

Before that, consumer price index data due Tuesday will also be watched given its connection to inflation.

— Alex Harring

Tailwinds from improvements in delivery could be restricted by increases in competition for electric vehicle maker Nio, according to Nomura.

Analyst Frank Fan initiated coverage of the China-based vehicle maker’s stock at neutral. His $7.50 price target implies U.S.-listed shares will slide about 3% in the next year from where they finished Friday’s session.

“We believe the company is on track to improve deliveries in 2H23F,” Fan said in a note to clients Sunday, also calling first-quarter deliveries “lackluster.” “That said, we expect NIO’s implied upside to be capped by intensified competition and limited market share improvement in 2023F, based on the company’s 2023 guidance for deliveries vs. the overall growth outlook for the EV industry.”

Fan’s price target implies further downside for the stock, which has already dropped more than 14% this year.

On Monday, the company cut prices and ended free battery swaps for new buyers despite management saying earlier this year that the company would not enter the electric vehicle “price war.” U.S. shares were up more than 7% in Monday’s session.