Tencent, Alibaba Lift Local Shares To Strong Close

Local shares made healthy gains on Thursday as investors cheered on reports that US Trump administration is dropping plans to blacklist Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu.

Tencent, a heavyweight on the blue-chip index, jumped 5.6 percent. Alibaba was up 5 percent.

Shares of mainland telco firms and CNOOC also surged on a U-turn by the manager of the Tracker Fund to continue buying constituent stocks on the Hang Seng Index blacklisted by Washington.

Shares of CNOOC finished more than 6 percent higher, despite index provider S&P Dow Jones Indices saying it would remove the mainland oil giant from its products.

China Mobile and China Unicom each gained more than 2 percent.

Overall, the Hang Sang index advanced 261 points, or 0.9 percent, to finish at 28,496.

Turnover was at HK$207.7 billion.

Markets across the border finished in the red after the mainland reported its biggest jump in coronavirus cases in more than 10 months.

The Shanghai Composite index lost 0.9 percent, while the blue-chip CSI300 index slumped 1.9 percent. The Shenzhen Composite index retreated 1.4 percent.

The Nikkei in Japan posted gains for a sixth day to breach another three-decade high before closing up 0.9 percent. Australia gained 0.4 percent. Singapore edged up 0.7 percent. The Kospi in Seoul was flat and Taiwan gave up 0.4 percent.