South Korea leads gains among major Asia benchmarks on Fed cheer

"China continues to be an overhang for Apple despite the fact that they're seeing continued services revenue growth," Shannon Saccocia, chief investment officer of NB Private Wealth said. 

Investors will monitor Apple earnings to gauge the strength of the consumer and as a preemptive look at the U.S. holiday season. 

Apple will report quarterly earnings after U.S. markets close on Thursday, and is expected to post its fourth consecutive quarterly revenue decline. Analysts expect $89.28 billion in sales, which would mark about a 1% fall from last year.

"Is the high-end consumer cracking a little bit in the face of a continued high-priced basket with inflation coming down but not coming down particularly quickly," Saccocia said. 

But Saccocia remains confident of a good readthrough for Apple results particularly in the United States and potentially even China.

— Shreyashi Sanyal

Shares of K-pop agency Hybe surged as much as 5.2% after the company announced its third-quarter operating profit climbed 19.8% to 72.65 billion South Korean won ($54.11 million).

Net profit inched up to 98.58 billion won, a 5.9% climb compared to the year ago period.

Hybe, which manages artists including global boy group BTS, also saw total revenue for the third quarter rise 20.7% year-on-year to 537.86 billion won.

Album sales and concert revenue led the increase in revenue for the third quarter compared to 2022, spiking 104.4% and 83.9% year-on-year respectively.

— Lim Hui Jie

Australia's balance of goods for September narrowed to 6.79 billion Australian dollars ($4.37 billion) on seasonally adjusted basis, official data showed.

The reading was the narrowest since March 2021, and below a Reuters poll forecast of AU$9.64 billion.

Exports fell 1.4%, driven by a drop in non-monetary gold shipments. Imports jumped 7.5%, led by a 74% surge in imports of industrial transport equipment.

The Australia Bureau of Statistics said it has ceased reporting data on trade services monthly and it will now be published quarterly.

— Shreyashi Sanyal

Shares of DBS Bank slipped 0.36% in early trade, in contrast to the 0.62% gain on Singapore's Straits Times Index.

This comes after Singapore's monetary authority imposed a six-month pause on new investments by the bank, among other measures, following a wide ranging outage of digital and physical banking services on Oct.15.

Earlier this year, DBS suffered two outages in March and May, leading the Monetary Authority of Singapore to call the outages "unacceptable" and impose an additional capital requirement on the bank.

—Lim Hui Jie

Hong Kong's retail sales grew at their slowest pace since January, highlighting the impact of a global high interest rate environment.

Retail sales for September rose 13% on a year-over-year basis, less than the prior month's 13.7% rise, official data showed late on Wednesday.

"The culprit of sluggish recovery is elevated interest rates, which has been dampening consumption & tourism, external trade, and investment," said Samuel Tse, a DBS economist. "HK economic fundamentals closely follows the Mainland (China)."

Tse says external demand from both China and the rest of the world were tepid, highlighting that rising rates restrained consumption through high fixed deposits rate, a strong Hong Kong dollar and a weak asset market.

— Shreyashi Sanyal

Analysts at investment firm Jefferies named Asian stocks primed to or continuing with significant buybacks, which they said are an opportunity for investors.

Companies buy shares back from investors for several reasons such as having a strong balance sheet and making valuations more attractive. Buybacks also provide a "sustained source of demand for equities while being a confidence-booster in terms of companies' belief in their own stock," Jefferies' analysts wrote in an Oct. 25 research note.

Several Chinese tech giants such as Tencent and Alibaba turned up on the list.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here.

— Amala Balakrishner

Will the S&P 500 be nearer to 5,000 by the end of the year?

Morgan Stanley Investment Management's Andrew Slimmon was among some on Wall Street who earlier this year believed so.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here about what he thinks now.

Slimmon said if the market does rally into the year-end, it will be led by the "Magnificent Seven" stocks, naming his preferred play.

— Weizhen Tan

South Korea's inflation rate quickened for the third straight month in October, with the consumer price index increasing 3.8% year-on-year.

This was higher than the 3.6% expected by economists polled by Reuters, and also more than the 3.7% rise in September.

The reading marks the third straight month that the inflation rate in the country has climbed, after hitting a 25-month low of 2.3% in July.

— Lim Hui Jie

The Federal Reserve kept interest rates unchanged at a range of 5.25%-5.5%. The central bank also upgraded its view of the economy.

In a statement, the Fed said "economic activity expanded at a strong pace in the third quarter." In previous remarks, the central bank noted the economy was growing at a "solid pace." The Fed on Wednesday also said job gains "have moderated since earlier in the year but remain strong."

— Fred Imbert

According to Gina Bolvin, the Federal Reserve's assessment of the economy may weigh on more volatile assets in the near term.

"The Fed acknowledging that 'financial conditions have tightened' may keep riskier assets from rallying in the short term," said Bolvin, president of Boston-based Bolvin Wealth Management Group. "So far, no change in the fed funds rate leaves fixed income and the equity market unchanged. The Fed is probably done."

After the Fed maintained interest rates at current levels, chair Jerome Powell said that taming inflation will likely require a slowdown in growth and in the labor market. "Tighter financial and credit conditions for households and businesses are likely to weigh on economic activity, hiring and inflation," read Wednesday's Federal Open Market Committee statement.

Stocks rallied Wednesday afternoon, to be sure, with the information technology and communication sectors leading the market higher by 1.8% and 1.6%, respectively.

— Pia Singh

The odds that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates another quarter point at its next meeting on Dec. 13 narrowed on Wednesday following the central bank's November meeting.

The implied probability of a December hike dropped to 17.1%, down from 28.8% Tuesday and 29.3% a week ago, according to the CME FedWatch tool, which is based on 30-day fed funds futures prices.

Fed funds currently stand at 5.25%-5.50%, where they were set by the Fed in July.

— Scott Schnipper