HONG KONG — Asia markets are mostly higher on Friday following gains on Wall Street driven by Tesla, IBM and Meta Platforms after strong profit reports.
U.S. futures and oil prices rose.
Japan’s core inflation rate, a key indicator of national trends, rose to 2.5% in January, surpassing the central bank’s 2% target and paving the way for further interest rate hikes. Meanwhile, Japan’s unemployment rate for December declined to 2.4% from 2.5% in the previous month.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index edged 0.1% higher to 39,540.37.
The Kospi in South Korea fell 1.4% to 2,501.83 as trading resumed on Friday after the holidays, during which Chinese startup DeepSeek stirred panic in the AI world. Shares of SK Hynix, a major supplier to Nvidia Corp., plummeted by 9.9%. Another tech giant, Samsung, lost 2.4%.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 advanced 0.3% to 8,516.90. In Bangkok, the SET was up 0.1%.
Markets in Hong Kong and Shanghai remain closed for the lunar new year holidays.
On Thursday, the S&P 500 rose 0.5% to 6,071.17, as four out of every five stocks in the index climbed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.4% to 44,882.13, and the Nasdaq composite gained 0.3% to 19,681.75.
Meta Platforms helped push indexes higher by rising 1.6%. The company behind Facebook and Instagram delivered a better profit for the end of 2024 than analysts expected. Perhaps just as importantly for the market, it also talked up its artificial-intelligence efforts and said it will continue to invest in the space.
That calmed some of the worries created by DeepSeek when it said it developed a large language model capable of competing with the world’s best without having to use top-flight chips. That raised questions about whether all the investment expected for AI chips, data centers and electricity is really needed and sent a shock through markets at the start of the week.
The AI boom has been a primary reason for the U.S. stock market’s run to repeated records, and the threat has hit stocks like Nvidia particularly hard. The chip company that’s become the symbol of the AI frenzy spent most of Thursday lower but ended with a gain of 1% and was one of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500.
Keeping indexes in check was Microsoft, which fell 6.2%. The Redmond, Washington-based software giant topped analysts’ expectations for profit in the latest quarter, but the focus was instead on the slower-than-expected growth in its cloud computing business, which is a centerpiece of its AI efforts.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also continued to talk up AI following DeepSeek’s disruption.
“DeepSeek had some real innovations,” he said, adding that it is good to have efficiency gains and lower prices in AI development because it “means people can consume more and there’ll be more apps written.”
Treasury yields held relatively steady Thursday after a report indicated the U.S. economy grew at a solid pace at the end of 2024, but slightly slower than economists expected. The 10-year Treasury yield edged down to 4.52% from 4.53% late Wednesday.
The report showed a “Goldilocks” economy at the turn of the year, one that was neither too hot nor too cold, according to Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY. But he warned many uncertainties in Washington could change things, including what it does with income tax rates, tariffs and immigration.
In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude added 55 cents to $73.28 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 46 cents to $76.35 a barrel.
In currency trading, the U.S. dollar rose to 154.42 Japanese yen from 154.18 yen. The euro cost $1.0385, down from $1.0392.
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AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed.
