Hong Kong stocks rise around 3% after reports say city is considering Covid rule

China’s health authorities announced guidelines for treating Covid patients at home on Thursday, a day after formalizing a policy that allows most infected patients to quarantine at home, as part of easing measures in the country.

The notice on the National Health Commission’s website said patients should isolate in a separate room if possible, and self administer antigen tests.

While noting patients with acute symptoms should go to a hospital, the announcement included instructions for patients with milder symptoms to monitor their health at home and take medicine as needed.

The commission included a list of medicines used to treat Covid symptoms.

Health authorities are slated to hold a press briefing at 3 p.m. local time.

— Abigail Ng, Evelyn Cheng

Fitch Ratings expects home prices in Australia to see a significant drop of between 7% to 10% next year, it said in its latest outlook report.

The agency also predicts that China’s home prices will fall by 1% to 3% next year.

“We expect prices to decline further in 2023 before bottoming out but mortgage performance to only modestly deteriorate, in the face of economic headwinds,” Tracy Wan of Fitch Ratings said in the report.

However, home prices in Japan could buck the trend to rise by 2% to 4% in 2023, the report said. Australia’s prices are forecast to rise in 2024.

– Jihye Lee

Japan’s economy saw an annualized quarterly contraction of 0.8% in the third quarter, with the revised gross domestic product reading beating expectations in a Reuters survey for a 1.1% contraction.

The government’s first preliminary estimate released in November was a 1.2% decline.

The nation also reported a 64.1 billion yen ($469.3 million) deficit in its unadjusted current account balance, government data showed. The reading significantly missed estimates for a surplus of 623.4 billion yen in a separate Reuters poll.

– Jihye Lee

Australia’s trade surplus for October came in at 12.2 billion Australian dollars ($8.19 billion), slightly larger than expected, official data showed.

Economists polled by Reuters predicted a print of 12.1 billion Australian dollars, expecting a further drop than reported – after the economy saw a trade surplus of 12.4 billion Australian dollars.

Exports fell 0.9%, and imports declined 0.7%.

— Abigail Ng

Stocks closed mostly lower Wednesday, with the S&P 500 slipping 0.19% to close at 3,933.92.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed flat, or 1.58 points higher, to finish the session at 33,597.92. The Nasdaq Composite fell 0.51% to end at 10,958.55.

— Samantha Subin

A shortage of semiconductors during a boom in electric-vehicle sales could help raise profits at a handful of chip makers, according to Bank of America.

The Wall Street bank predicted that two chip…