Foreign stocks finished Tuesday trading on an upbeat note after US home price data, as well as comments over improved growth in China, offered hope of a coming economic recovery.
Home prices in the US rose in November, meaning the domestic housing market strengthened. The S&P/Case-Shiller index – which examines housing prices in the 20 biggest US cities – rose 5.5% year on year in November.Meanwhile, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), the country’s top thinktank, said that China’s economy was set to grow 8.4% in 2013, up from 8.2%.Tuesday also marked the start of the US Federal Reserve's first monetary policy meeting of the year, which experts don’t expect to bring any big news. “Most likely, a head of the regulator [the Fed] will confirm the monetary course that had been scheduled earlier,” Investcafe analyst Ekaterina Kondrashova wrote in an email.Russian stocks finished Tuesday trading in the red: The RTS declined 0.71% to 1,623.87 and the MICEX lost 0.84% to end at 1,549.75.European markets closed higher on Tuesday, with shares in London leading the region. The FTSE 100 added 0.71%, while Germany's DAX went up 0.20% and France's CAC 40 rose 0.13%.The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.5% to end at 13,954. The S&P 500 added 0.5%, closing at 1508.Stocks in Asia are trending higher on Wednesday: Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index rose 0.7%, Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average rose 1.1%, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 index edged up 0.1% –extending a 21-month high and nine-session winning streak – and South Korea’s Kospi inched up 0.1%.