Asian stocks up despite Greece fears
New stimulus measures from China boosted sentiment.
Asia's stock markets bounced back today (June 30th) following a heavy plunge yesterday as Greece closed its banks after failing to reach an agreement with its creditors over the week-end.
Greece is inching closer toward a debt default, as the deadline to repay an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan falls today.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' decided over the week-end to call a referendum on European and IMF proposals for Greek reforms in return for bailout funds.
Although investors in the region were concerned that the Greek crisis could spread to other euro countries, markets bounced back after the launch of new measures by China aimed at bolstering market confidence.
"Talk of putting a halt to the initial public offering (IPO) process helped spur some buying and it will certainly help mitigate the prospect of traders selling existing stock holdings to take part in the IPO process. There has also been talk of using the country's endowment fund to buy equities, as well as cutting stamp duty, while the central bank has further cut the seven-day repo rate by 20 basis points to 2.5 per cent," Chris Weston, IG's chief market strategist, wrote in a note seen by CNBC.
Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 was up 0.6 per cent to 20,235.73, South Korea's Kospi rose 0.7 per cent to 2,074.20. Hong Kong's Hang Seng jumped 1.1 per cent to 26,250.03. China's Shanghai Composite soared 5.5 per cent to 4,277.22 while Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.7 per cent at 5,459.00.
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