Embattled Chinese real estate developer Country Garden may avoid a default on its yuan-denominated bonds after most holders of a local note agreed not to demand repayment this week, according to Bloomberg News.

During a meeting at the Shenzhen Stock Exchange last week, most investors agreed to forego a put option expiring Dec. 13 that allows investors to demand repayment before maturity next year, the news outlet reported Tuesday, citing unnamed people with direct knowledge of the matter.

The report came after markets in Hong Kong and mainland China closed. Country Garden shares in Hong Kong closed higher by more than 8% on Tuesday, prior to the news.

CNBC has reached out to the company for comment.

Country Garden was once the largest non-state-owned developer in China by sales. It ran into financing troubles this year, and defaulted on a U.S. dollar bond last month, according to Bloomberg.

Economic growth in China has been sluggish due in part due to serious debt problems that some of the largest real estate developers are facing, as Beijing moves to deleverage its once-bloated property sector — which accounts for about 33% of its economy.

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Earnings excitementMajor U.S. indexes rallied Monday as investors grew optimistic over strong earnings reports thus far. Asia-Pacific markets traded higher Tuesday as South Korean indexes led gains in the region. Meanwhile, New Zealand reported two-year low inflation readings: Consumer prices in the third quarter rose 5.6% year on year, less than the second quarter’s 6% increase.

China’s renewed reboundChina’s economic growth will return next year, Mark Makepeace, former head of benchmark giant FTSE Russell told CNBC. “In the short term, China does have some issues … but the potential is there,” Makepeace said. One such issue: The country’s property sector is still struggling. If Country Garden fails to make a $15 million coupon payment today, all of its offshore debt could be in default.

Big Tech might win from the HouseIf Republican Rep. Jim Jordan is elected speaker of the U.S. House, technology giants like Google, Apple and Amazon stand to benefit because Jordan’s against using antitrust regulations to break up companies. He’s “aimed most of his ire at the Biden administration’s pressure on companies — not the companies themselves,” said Adam Kovacevich, CEO of lobbying group Chamber of Progress.

Biden to visit IsraelU.S. President Joe Biden will travel to Israel on Wednesday “to stand in solidarity in the face of Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack,” he said on social media platform X. While there, Biden will try to mitigate an expansion of the war between Israel and Hamas, and work to establish the safe passage of critical humanitarian aid to Gaza, said Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

[PRO] Rising oil prices could boost non-energy stocksExogenous shocks, like supply cuts and the Israel-Hamas war, have forced oil prices upward. That’s good news for energy stocks — but these non-energy, European stocks also stand to benefit when oil and gas prices rise, according to Bank of America.

Despite U.S. Treasury yields rising and the Israel-Hamas war becoming increasingly volatile, major indexes in the U.S. closed in the green. Investors’ excitement over third-quarter earnings season, it appears, powered Monday’s rally in equities.

Companies that have already reported have mostly beat Wall Street estimates, giving their shares a boost. Charles Schwab climbed 4.66% after beating earnings expectations, and on Friday, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo rose following their earnings reports.

Investors are hoping this positive start will follow through for the week, during which 53 companies in the S&P 500 — around 11% of its constituents — will report results. (In fact, RBC Capital Markets’ so optimistic about earnings that it’s raised its forecast for 2023 and 2024 earnings per share. The bank’s new numbers “imply that the S&P 500 could surpass 4,700 by year-end 2023,” said Lori Calvasina, head of U.S. rates strategy at RBC.)

If stocks continue rising at the brisk pace they did Monday, that’s certainly a possibility. The S&P 500 added 1.06% to close at 4,373 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average increased 0.93% for its best day in a month, putting it less than 5% from its 52-week high.

“I really see a relief rally going on,” said Lisa Erickson, senior vice president at U.S. Bank Wealth Management. “Sentiment has just turned relatively more positive.”

Indeed, even the small-cap Russell 2000 rallied 1.59%. “This market is starting to broaden out a little bit,” Richard Bernstein, CEO of Richard Bernstein Advisors, told CNBC.

The Russell 2000 has lagged behind major indexes this year because gains were concentrated in the “Magnificent Seven” mega-cap stocks. But “if the economy is going to re-accelerate, which it is doing, and if profits growth is going to re-accelerate, which it is doing, then small caps should lead the way,” added Bernstein. “That’s what history says.”

With the Russell 2000’s best session since July, it’s no wonder investors are growing excited.

BEIJING – China’s economy is running into more challenges.

Credit data for July released Friday showed a slump in demand from businesses and households to borrow money for the future. Real estate problems persist with once-healthy developer Country Garden now on the brink of default. Consumer sentiment is weak.

“The weak July credit data suggest the downward spiral of the property sector continues, and worsening geopolitical tensions add to the uncertainty,” Lu Ting, chief China economist at Nomura, and a team said in a report Friday.

“In Japan during the 1990s, corporates might have paid down their debt to improve their chances of survival, but in today’s China, corporates and households are cutting their borrowing due to a lack of confidence (and trust),” the report said.

New local currency bank loans plunged by 89% in July from June to 345.9 billion yuan ($47.64 billion), less than half the 800 billion yuan analysts had forecast in a Reuters poll.

The July new yuan loan number was the lowest since late 2009, according to Reuters.

Those figures “should mark a low” since policy moves in June could have moved up some demand, Xiangrong Yu, chief China economist at Citi, and a team said in a note.

“Yet all the factors just cannot mask how weak credit demand is and how low risk appetite is,” the analysts said, noting expectations for rate cuts by the end of September. Without such cuts, they expect a greater risk that China misses its growth target of around 5% this year.

On Tuesday, China is set to release July economic data that’s expected to show no change from June in the pace of growth for industrial production and fixed asset investment, according to a Reuters poll.  

Retail sales are expected to rise 4.7% year-on-year pace in July, slightly faster than in June, the poll showed.

China’s massive real estate sector, where the majority of household wealth is parked, has reemerged as an area of concern that it could drag down the broader economy.

Developer Country Garden announced over the weekend it was suspending trading in at least 10 of its mainland-China traded yuan bonds.

Last week, the company missed coupon payments on two U.S. dollar-denominated bonds, according to Reuters.

Country Garden’s U.S. dollar bonds account for just under half of outstanding high-yield U.S. dollar-denominated bonds, according to Goldman Sachs analysis.

China U.S. dollar bonds that are of investment grade account for 43% of the total, the analysis showed.

“Given that the majority of [high-yield] developers have either defaulted or conducted bond exchanges, we believe rising stresses amongst the remaining [high yield] developers are unlikely to have broader impact on the offshore bond market,” the Goldman analysts said in a report Friday.

“We believe of greater concern is whether rising stresses will spillover to [investment grade] developers, most of whom are state owned enterprises [SOEs].”

State-owned companies have generally found it easier to obtain loans in China, where state-owned banks dominate. State-owned developers have also fared better in terms of recent sales than non-state-owned developers, data show.

However, China’s entire real estate sector still needs to contract by about 10 percentage points to reach a similar level of GDP contribution as Japan or South Korea, said Louis Lau, director of investments and emerging markets portfolio manager at Brandes Investment Partners.

He pointed out that while real estate has contributed to about 30% of GDP in China, that share is in the lower 20 percentage points in South Korea and Japan.

In 2020, Beijing began an earnest crackdown on developers’ high reliance on debt for growth. Authorities have eased their stance in recent months, with a notable shift in late July, but stopped short of large-scale stimulus.

“The more the government tries to help the real estate industry, the longer it takes for the industry to find a reasonable bottom,” Lau said.

He is underweight China, with selective investments in some consumer names and industries he expects will outperform.

Chinese stocks soared Tuesday as Beijing pledged to ramp up measures to bolster China’s sputtering economy.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index surged more than 3%, China’s tech-heavy ChiNext rose 1.8% and the Shanghai Composite Index increased 1.81% on Tuesday morning in Asia.

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Chinese property developers Country Garden and Longfor soared 14.3% and 20.7% respectively. Sunac rose 12.5%, China Vanke was up 11.02% and China Overseas Land and Investment grew 11.39%.

A day earlier, Chinese real estate stocks tumbled on renewed debt fears. The Chinese government cracked down on the property sector’s debt levels in August 2020.

The stock rebound comes after China’s top leaders pledged on Monday to ramp up policy support to boost domestic consumption as the post Covid rebound has been slower than expected.

According to official data, China’s gross domestic product in the second quarter increased 6.3% from a year ago, performing worse than the 7.3% economists predicted. This was a 0.8% growth from the first quarter, and was slower than the 2.2% quarter-on-quarter pace recorded in the January to March period.

China’s top leaders met Monday for the much-anticipated Politburo meeting and hinted at moves to “adjust and optimize” property policy in what the leadership called a “torturous” economic recovery.

State news agency Xinhua quoted the 24-member Politburo as saying “the economy is facing new difficulties and challenges.” That’s mainly due to weak domestic demand, operational challenges for companies as well as “a grim and complex external environment,” it said.

“The meeting emphasized that it is necessary to actively expand domestic demand, give full play to the basic role of consumption in driving economic growth, expand consumption by increasing residents’ income,” according to Xinhua.

“It is necessary to boost the consumption of automobiles, electronic products, and home furnishing, and promote the consumption of services such as sports, leisure, and cultural tourism,” said the report.

Hong Kong-listed shares of internet giants rose on Tuesday. Alibaba shares soared 4.7%, while Tencent was up nearly 4%. Meituan and Baidu shares were higher by 5.7% and 6.8% respectively.

In the electric vehicle space, Xpeng soared 11%, Li Auto was up 4.15% and BYD rose 2%.

“This is a reconfirmation that the [Chinese] policymakers have heard the market concern on more support needed for the domestic economy,” said Xiaolin Chen, head of international at KraneShares, on CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” Tuesday.

“They want to achieve the 5% GDP target of this year. The first job they need to do is to create jobs for the labor force in China,” said Chen.

“I do certainly see some encouraging language released from the statement that removed a lot of the concerns of people having a high focus on real estate market, employment, private investment, and so on. So far, the language has been encouraging.”

Reaction from Chinese banks were muted. Hong Kong-listed shares of China Construction Bank and Bank of China were flat, ICBC was up 0.28%.

In November, China’s financial authorities rolled out a 16-step guideline to shore up its housing sector, and “relevant policies” will now be now extended to the end of 2023, the People’s Bank of China announced.

Xinhua reported that the move is to “guide financial institutions to continue deferring loan payments for real estate enterprises, while propping up financial support for the real estate enterprises to ensure the delivery of housing projects.”