Most of the Asian equity benchmarks are trading higher in early deals on Wednesday, tracking overnight lead from Wall Street as sentiments remained up-beat on the back of better-than-expected U.S. retail sales data for the month of December. Back on regional turf, the Japanese market is trading sharply higher, recovering from a sharp fall in the previous session. On the economic front, the M2 money stock in Japan jumped 4.2 percent on year in December to 862.8 trillion yen. The headline figure was shy of forecasts for an increase of 4.3 percent and down from the upwardly revised 4.4 percent gain in November. Meanwhile, the M3 money stock added an annual 3.4 percent to 1,174.6 trillion yen - matching expectations and down from the upwardly revised 3.5 percent in the previous month.
Hang Seng rose 71.38 points or 0.31% to 22,862.66, Jakarta Composite surged 41.18 points or 0.94% to 4,431.96, Nikkei 225 soared 259.91 points or 1.69% to 15,682.31, Straits Times increased 18.99 points or 0.61% to 3,142.74, Seoul Composite added 5.20 points or 0.27% to 1,951.27 and Taiwan Weighted was up by 67.07 points or 0.78% to 8,615.21.
On the flip side, Shanghai Composite declined 12.74 points or 0.63% to 2,014.10 and KLSE Composite was down by 5.89 points or 0.32% to 1,829.08.