MARKET UPDATE

Amazon to spend nearly $9 billion to expand cloud.

Amazon.com plans to spend S$12 billion ($8.88 billion) over the next four years to expand its cloud computing infrastructure in Singapore, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Web Services (AWS) said on Tuesday.

The investment adds to the S$11.5 billion the company has already invested in the Asia Pacific Region till 2023, bringing its total planned spend to more than S$23 billion by 2028, AWS said in a statement.

Southeast Asia’s top leaders are scrambling for a bigger slice of the global tech pie, with Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore hosting Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang in December, and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Tim Cook visiting Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia last month.

Recent investments in the region include Apple’s plan to invest over $250 million into its operations in Singapore.

 

Asia shares rise on rate cut bets.

Asian shares made 15-month highs on Tuesday on renewed confidence of U.S. interest rate cuts, while a weaker yen and a small dip in the Australian dollar kept the dollar steady.

Australia’s central bank left interest rates on hold, as expected, but the Aussie dollar slipped about 0.4% and the Australian stock market rose as policymakers did not strengthen guidance around the risk of another rate hike.

In Hong Kong the Hang Seng was set to snap a 10-day winning streak with a 0.9% loss, though markets in Taiwan and South Korea were all higher.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.3%. Japan’s Nikkei rose 1.3%.

FTSE futures were up 1% pointing to a positive return from a market holiday. European futures rose 0.3% and S&P 500 futures were flat.

The mood was underpinned by last week’s softer-than-expected U.S. jobs data and remarks from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell reiterating that the next move in rates will be lower.

 

Bitcoin price today drops to $63k.

Bitcoin price fell on Tuesday as sentiment towards cryptocurrencies showed little signs of improvement amid regulatory woes and as outflows from investment products, specifically exchange-traded funds, remained in play.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency fell 1% in the past 24 hours to $63,558.2 by 01:52 ET (05:52 GMT).

Sentiment towards crypto markets was battered this week by a report showing that less than 10% of overall stablecoin transactions- which are a key vehicle for transacting in crypto- were organic or from real users.

The report raised questions over just how much retail demand there actually was for crypto, given that stablecoin operators, specifically Tether- clocked consistent increases in market capital.

Additionally, trading app Robinhood Markets Inc (NASDAQ:HOOD) said it was facing potential regulatory action from the Securities and Exchange Commission over crypto tokens traded on its platform. The SEC was also seen postponing a key decision on ETFs.

The negative factors came amid sustained outflows from crypto investment products, indicating that sentiment towards the space remained largely negative.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Important Note: The information found on Ausprime platform is intended only to be informative, is not advice nor a recommendation, nor research, or a record of our trading prices, or an offer of, or solicitation for a transaction in any financial instrument and thus should not be treated as such. The information provided does not include any specific investment objectives, financial situation and needs of any specific person who may receive it. The past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance and/or results. Past Performance or Forward-looking scenarios are not a guarantee of future performance. Actual results may differ materially from those anticipated in forward-looking or past performance statement