Stock market today: Live updates

U.S.-listed shares of Chinese companies fell Wednesday following the release of weaker-than-expected GDP data out of China.

Shares of JD.com and PDD were down more than 4% each in the premarket. Alibaba lost 3.3%. The iShares China Large Cap ETF (FXI) was also down 3.1%.

— Fred Imbert

China reported fourth-quarter GDP figures slightly below expectations, bringing 2023 growth to 5.2%.

The country’s economy grew 5.2% in the October to December quarter, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday. That’s below expectations of a 5.3% growth forecast by economists in a Reuters poll.

China’s statistics bureau said the unemployment rate in cities in December was 5.1%, while that for people ages 16 to 24 remained far higher at 14.9%.

The bureau had in the summer temporarily suspended the release of the younger age group’s unemployment rate, citing the need to reassess calculation methods. That unemployment rate had previously climbed to records above 20%.

Read the full story here.

— Evelyn Cheng

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was the worst-performing index for a second straight day in Asia, falling 2.76% as real estate and consumer non-cyclical stocks declined.

Chinese tech giant Alibaba’s subsidiary Alibaba Health Information Technology, which plunged 7.43%, was the biggest loser on the HSI.

It was followed by residential property manager Longfor Group and tech heavyweight Meituan, which shed 5.68% and 5.48%, respectively.

Business sentiment at big Japanese manufacturers slid in January for the first time in four months, according to the monthly Reuters Tankan survey.

The sentiment index for manufacturers stood at +6, down from +12 six points in December, while the service-sector index grew to +29 in January from +26 in the previous month.

The monthly poll by Reuters tracks the Bank of Japan’s key tankan quarterly survey, and is calculated by subtracting the percentage of pessimistic respondents from optimistic ones. A positive figure means optimists outnumber pessimists, and vice versa.

Reuters said the poll underscored concerns about weak external demand, especially from China.

— Lim Hui Jie

The market looks overvalued by about 9% to 10%, according to Aswath Damodaran.

“The expectation game has turned against the market,” the professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Tuesday.

Markets shocked investors in 2023, defying expectations for another rough year. Now, he fears that the market’s “turned too much in the other direction,” believing that inflation’s under control and the economy’s skirted a recession.

“This year, good news is going to require a lot more than it did last year and that too me is why I think stocks are in a dangerous place right now,” he said.

— Samantha Subin

Shares of Interactive Brokers slumped nearly 3% after posting mixed quarterly results.

Revenues came in at $1.15 billion and slightly ahead of the $1.14 billion expected, according to LSEG. However, the firm posted earnings of $1.52 per share, falling short of the $1.55 expected.

Interactive Brokers said that options volumes were up 21% and customer accounts rose 23% year over year, but equities volumes declined 22%.

Stock futures opened flat on Tuesday evening.

S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq-100 futures were little changed. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average inched down 17 points.

— Samantha Subin