Stock Market Today: Asian Stocks Mostly Rise Even as Chinese Benchmarks Falter

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Asian markets rose on Tuesday after another day of gains on Wall Street, although Hong Kong’s benchmark faltered.

US futures remained almost unchanged and oil prices rose slightly.

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The Nikkei 225 in Tokyo, which reopened after a national holiday, rose 1.6% to 38,835.10. The gains were led by semiconductor companies such as Tokyo Electron, which closed 4.8% higher, and Advantest, which rose 2.2%.

South Korea’s Kospi rose 2.1% to 2,731.83, helped by major technology companies such as Samsung Electronics, which posted a 4.5% gain, and smaller rival SK Hynix, which rose 3.7%.

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Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 0.5% to 18,470.90. But the Shanghai Composite Index recovered from early losses, rising 0.3% to 3,148.56.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 1.3% to 7,781.70 after the central bank decided to keep interest rates unchanged at 4.35%.

While the Reserve Bank of Australia has likely set the bar high for rate hikes, “it will likely need to see several more months of weak data before it is confident it can ease policy measures.” Overall, rate cuts are likely to become longer longer than most expect,” Abhijit Surya of Capital Economics said in a commentary.

Taiwan’s Taiex rose 0.6% while India’s Sensex lost 0.7% as the country began the third phase of its week-long national electoral process.

On Monday, the S&P 500 rose 1% to 5,180.74. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.5% to 38,852.27 and the Nasdaq Composite jumped 1.2% to 16,349.25.

Tech stocks were at the forefront, with well-known ringleaders Nvidia and Super Micro Computer once again driving the market higher. They’ve had a few problems lately, but the hype surrounding artificial intelligence technology has sent Nvidia up 86.1% year to date, after a 3.8% gain on Monday. Super Micro is up 192.1% after gaining 6.1%.

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Berkshire Hathaway rose 1% after Warren Buffett’s company reported its latest quarterly results over the weekend.

That helped offset a 9.7% decline for Spirit Airlines, which reported a slightly larger loss than expected. The airline said it faces increasing competition in many of its markets, particularly between the United States and Latin America.

Apple fell 0.9% after Berkshire Hathaway said it had reduced its stake in the tech giant.

The US stock market has been reeling since setting a record in late March. It failed for weeks because of fears that stubbornly high inflation would prevent, or at least delay, the Federal Reserve from making the interest rate cuts that Wall Street is demanding.

But late last week, markets experienced a burst of optimism after the jobs report came in weaker than expected. It suggested the U.S. economy could walk the tightrope of remaining strong enough to avoid a nasty recession, but not so strong that it puts too much upward pressure on inflation.

Traders are betting on a nearly 89 percent chance that the Fed will cut interest rates at least once before the end of the year, according to data from CME Group. This is an increase from the 81.6% probability observed a week earlier. Lower interest rates would help ease pressure on the economy and financial system.

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David Mericle, an economist at Goldman Sachs, said he still expects two rate cuts this year, in July and November, after Fed Chairman Jerome Powell “strongly opposed the possibility of further rate hikes” at his news conference last week.

This week is relatively quiet. According to FactSet, the majority of companies in the S&P 500 have already reported earnings for the first three months of the year, with more than three-quarters beating earnings expectations.

But some more big names are on the way, including The Walt Disney Co. and Uber Technologies.

According to strategists at Deutsche Bank, corporate earnings reports were better than expected not only in the US, but also in Europe and Japan. After four straight declines, global earnings growth is on track for a second straight quarter of growth.

In other trading, benchmark U.S. crude rose 24 cents to $78.72 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On Monday it rose 37 cents.

Brent crude, the international standard, also rose 24 cents to $83.57 a barrel.

The dollar rose to 154.49 Japanese yen from 153.90 yen. The euro was almost unchanged at 1.0769 US dollars.

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