HONG KONG (AP) — Asian markets were higher Friday after Wall Street rallied for the third day, driven by hopes for the Federal Reserve to cut rates.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 surged 1.9% to 35,705.74 and the Kospi in South Korea gained 0.9% to 2,546.15.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng picked up 0.7% to 22,056.39, while the Shanghai Composite Index inched down 0.1% to 3,295.78.
The rally was boosted by hopes that Trump was softening his approach on tariffs and his criticism of the Federal Reserve, but China denied Thursday it’s involved in active trade negotiations with the U.S.
Tech stocks rose in China after some semiconductor import companies told Caijing Magazine that some chips made in the U.S. had been quietly exempted from the country’s 125% retaliatory tariffs.
The Lenovo Group rose 4.9% while the Chinese search engine company Baidu added 4.7%.
However, the shares of China’s largest semiconductor foundry, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, lost 2.4%.
Taiwan’s Taiex added 2%. India’s Sensex sank 1.4% after tensions with Pakistan over the Pahalgam terror attack.
The market in Australia was closed because of Anzac Day.
Wall Street’s rally kept rolling Thursday as better-than-expected profits for U.S. companies piled up in reports mainly from tech companies like ServiceNow and Texas Instruments, offsetting the uncertainties in the retail sector.
Federal Reserve officials boosted expectations for interest rate cuts as they said that they would slash the rate as early as June if Trump’s tariffs hurt the U.S. economy and job market.
The S&P 500 charged 2% higher to 5,484.77 and pulled within 11% of its record set earlier this year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.2% to 40,093.40, while the Nasdaq composite jumped 2.7% to 17,166.04.
In other moves early Friday, U.S. benchmark crude oil gained 35 cents to $63.14 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Brent crude, the international standard, added 30 cents to $66.85 per barrel.
The U.S dollar rose to 143.52 Japanese yen from 142.69 yen. The euro edged lower, to $1.1352 from $1.1391.
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AP Business Writers Stan Choe, Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.
