TOKYO — Asian shares mostly rose Thursday after the U.S. Federal Reserve opted not to cut interest rates for the first time since it began trying to help the economy through easier rates in September.
Some Asia-Pacific markets remained closed for the Lunar New Year holiday.
Investors remain uncertain over the outlook for the U.S. economy and over what’s ahead from the administration of President Donald Trump.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 rose 0.2% to 39,499.10 in afternoon trading. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.6% to 8,493.70.
SoftBank Group’s stock dipped 1.2% after reports it was in talks to possibly invest in OpenAI, while Nissan Motor’s shares gained 1.3% after the Japanese automaker confirmed plans to reduce production in the U.S.
On Wednesday, the S&P 500 fell 0.5% to 6,039.31 following the Fed’s widely expected decision. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 0.3% to 44,713.52, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.5% to 19,632.32.
The Fed’s decision could hint at rates staying on hold for a while following their swift drop at the end of 2024. Lower rates would help the economy by making it cheaper for U.S. households and companies to borrow, but the downside is they could also fuel more inflation.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury held at 4.53%, where it was late Tuesday.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the U.S. central bank could cut rates if inflation slows further or if the job market suddenly weakens. But “right now, we don’t see that, and we see things as in a really good place for policy and for the economy, and so we feel like we don’t need to be in a hurry to make any adjustments.”
While Wall Street would almost always prefer lower interest rates, “we would continue to focus on why the Fed won’t cut anytime soon, specifically a strong economy and labor, which bodes well for solid corporate earnings growth,” said Sameer Samana, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.
Wednesday’s relative calm offered some respite following two days of disruption driven by doubts about the artificial-intelligence boom.
A Chinese upstart, DeepSeek, has raised nearly existential questions for some of the AI industry after saying it developed a large-language model that can compete with the world’s best without having to use top-flight chips.
That casts doubt about whether AI development broadly will require as much spending on chips, vast data centers and electricity as Wall Street and Big Tech had assumed.
Nvidia,, whose stock has almost become a symbol of the AI bonanza, fell 4% Wednesday after plunging nearly 17% Monday and then jumping nearly 9% Tuesday. It was the single heaviest weight dragging the S&P 500 lower, by far.
Big gains for Nvidia and other Big Tech companies were instrumental in the S&P 500’s rallying to back-to-back yearly gains of more than 20% for the first time since before the millennium. Nvidia alone accounted for more than a fifth of all of the S&P 500’s total return last year.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, Starbucks rose 8.1% after delivering a better profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. T-Mobile US rallied 6.3% after topping Wall Street’s expectations for both profit and revenue in the last three months of 2024. It also said it expects to add between a net 5.5 million and 6 million in postpaid customers this year.
Trump Media & Technology Group rose after announcing it would be getting into the financial services business via a partnership with Charles Schwab. TMTG said more details would be released later this year, and what had been a double-digit gain for the notoriously volatile stock shrank to an increase of 6.8%.
In other dealings early Thursday, benchmark U.S. crude rose 9 cents to $72.71 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, stood unchanged at $76.58 a barrel.
The U.S. dollar cost 154.60 Japanese yen, down from 155.24 yen. The euro inched rose to $1.0419 from $1.0423.
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AP Writer Stan Choe contributed.
