HONG KONG: A surge in tech firms helped Tokyo’s Nikkei lead most Asian equities higher on Friday (Oct 3) as investors headed into the weekend on a broadly positive note, with United States rate-cut hopes out-muscling concerns about a government shutdown.
The rally across world markets this year has largely been fuelled by companies ploughing billions of dollars into all things artificial intelligence, and traders not wanting to miss out on the action.
That has helped push the valuations of some of the biggest names to eye-watering levels – with US chip titan Nvidia topping US$4 trillion – and several markets to record highs.
This week has seen extra momentum after South Korean semiconductor giants Samsung and SK hynix said they had struck a preliminary deal with the ChatGPT developer OpenAI to supply chips and other equipment for its Stargate project.
And on Friday, it was the turn of Japan’s Hitachi, which said it had entered into a strategic partnership with OpenAI to work on AI and energy, among other things.
Hitachi jumped more than 9 per cent, while other Japanese tech firms followed suit with Renesas up a similar amount, Sony gaining 2.8 per cent, and Advantest rising more than 3 per cent. Tech investment giant SoftBank piled on more than 3 per cent.
The advance helped push Tokyo’s Nikkei 1.9 per cent higher, while there were also gains in Sydney, Singapore, Bangkok, Wellington, Taipei, Jakarta and Manila.
London opened on the front foot with Paris and Frankfurt.
Hong Kong lost 1 per cent after jumping more than 4 per cent in the previous three trading days. Shanghai was closed for a holiday.
The rally – which saw all three main Wall Street indexes reach all-time peaks on Thursday – has also been stoked by data in recent months pointing to a slowdown in the US labour market.
That has led the Federal Reserve to cut borrowing costs and indicate more to come.
The positive sentiment has overshadowed the standoff in Washington that has seen the government partially shut down, leading to the closure of some services and the likely delay of the release of key jobs figures later in the day.
