Alibaba, JD.com lead Chinese tech gains as Singles' Day heads to a conclusion
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Alibaba (NYSE:BABA), JD.com (NASDAQ:JD) and other Chinese Internet companies headed toward an upbeat market session Thursday as retailers across China prepared for the country's big Singles' Day sales event. 
Culminating on November 11, Singles' Day has become China's equivalent to Black Friday in the U.S., as retailers use the day to launch sales and deals on a variety of products in an effort to boost revenue at the end of the year. The date, November 11, is also often called "Four Sticks" for its 11/11 notation, and has been taken to represent Chinese singles.
However, this year, there has been some speculation that retailers are anticipating a Singles' Day season that could be weaker than in prior years due to heavy top-down governmental business policies, as well as ongoing lockdowns related to Beijing's "Zero Covid" strategy.
Still, Wall Street got behind Chinese tech companies on Thursday, with Alibaba (BABA), the inventor of the Singles' Day, seeing its shares rise more than 4% in pre-market trading.
JD.com (JD) also had a strong start, rising almost 6%, while Baidu (BIDU) and Weibo (WB) each climbed more than 5%, Bilibili (BILI) surged by more than 8%, Pinduoduo (PDD) up almost 6%, and NetEase (NTES) rose nearly 3%.
The KraneShares CSI China Internet ETF (KWEB) showed some muscle and was up by more than 6%.
Thursday's gains also came on the heels of a day of losses that resulted from an overall broad decline across the tech sector.