Asian shares on Friday were mostly higher after Wall Street benchmarks fell on worries that the US Federal Reserve would keep raising interest rates.
Markets rose in Taiwan, Australia, China, Japan and South Korea China in muted trading.
Hot readings on the US jobs market on Thursday got traders thinking the Fed would need to keep inflicting pain on the economy to fight surging prices.
Photo: AFP
Inflation has been easing from a peak of 9.1 percent in June to 7.1 percent in November, and investors have been hoping for signs that could prompt the Fed to ease up on applying the brakes to the economy with high interest rates.
“Overall risk sentiments could lean more toward a wait-and-see in the lead-up to the US job report later, lacking a clear conviction in market direction from Wall Street over the past few days,” IG market strategist Yeap Jun Rong (葉俊榮) said in a report.
In Taipei, the TAIEX on Friday rose 72.29 points, or 0.51 percent, to close at 14,373.34. Turnover was NT$153.86 billion (US$5.01 billion). It was up 1.67 percent for the week.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 rose 0.59 percent to finish at 25,973.85, but fell 0.46 percent for the week.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 added 0.65 percent to 7,109.6, gaining 1.01 percent, while South Korea’s KOSPI rose 1.12 percent to 2,289.78, up 2.4 percent weekly.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index erased earlier gains, falling 0.29 percent to 20,991.64, but gained 6.12 percent for the week. The Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.08 percent to 3,157.64, rising 2.21 percent for the week.
Analysts said they expect economic growth in Asia to slow this year, although China’s emergence from almost three years of strict COVID-19 lockdowns and other containment measures contributed to a sense of optimism in Asia.
There is hope that the easing of restrictions would lead to a boom in countries’ tourism industries, and Hong Kong would be a major beneficiary, with the border opening at the weekend.
Suktae Oh, an analyst at Societe Generale, said he expects the Bank of Korea to raise rates by 25 percentage points to 3.5 percent at its policy meeting this week.
“The data continue to indicate weak economic activity and peaking inflation. The concerns surrounding financial stability have persisted due to high corporate leverage and housing market weakness, which would be bearish for growth outlook,” he said.
Additional reporting by staff writer, with CNA and AFP
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
NATIONAL SECURITY: Intel’s testing of ACM tools despite US government control ‘highlights egregious gaps in US technology protection policies,’ a former official said Chipmaker Intel Corp has tested chipmaking tools this year from a toolmaker with deep roots in China and two overseas units that were targeted by US sanctions, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Intel, which fended off calls for its CEO’s resignation from US President Donald Trump in August over his alleged ties to China, got the tools from ACM Research Inc, a Fremont, California-based producer of chipmaking equipment. Two of ACM’s units, based in Shanghai and South Korea, were among a number of firms barred last year from receiving US technology over claims they have
It is challenging to build infrastructure in much of Europe. Constrained budgets and polarized politics tend to undermine long-term projects, forcing officials to react to emergencies rather than plan for the future. Not in Austria. Today, the country is to officially open its Koralmbahn tunnel, the 5.9 billion euro (US$6.9 billion) centerpiece of a groundbreaking new railway that will eventually run from Poland’s Baltic coast to the Adriatic Sea, transforming travel within Austria and positioning the Alpine nation at the forefront of logistics in Europe. “It is Austria’s biggest socio-economic experiment in over a century,” said Eric Kirschner, an economist at Graz-based Joanneum
BUBBLE? Only a handful of companies are seeing rapid revenue growth and higher valuations, and it is not enough to call the AI trend a transformation, an analyst said Artificial intelligence (AI) is entering a more challenging phase next year as companies move beyond experimentation and begin demanding clear financial returns from a technology that has delivered big gains to only a small group of early adopters, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Taiwan said yesterday. Most organizations have been able to justify AI investments through cost recovery or modest efficiency gains, but few have achieved meaningful revenue growth or long-term competitive advantage, the consultancy said in its 2026 AI Business Predictions report. This growing performance gap is forcing executives to reconsider how AI is deployed across their organizations, it said. “Many companies
RSS