People walking in George St on a sunny day with the Sydney Town Hall building in the background.
Xavierarnau | E+ | Getty Images
Japanese and Australian markets climbed Thursday, breaking ranks with Wall Street that fell overnight as the Federal Reserve kept interest rates unchanged. Several Asia-Pacific markets were closed for the Lunar New Year holiday.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 gained 0.42% while the broader Topix index advanced 0.28% in choppy trading.
Shares in investment holding company SoftBank Group were down 0.5%, following news that it was in talks to invest up to $25 billion in OpenAI. Japanese tech stocks continued to advance: Advantest rose 5.12% while Tokyo Electron gained 2.03%.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.7%, extending gains from the previous session.
Australia’s export price index climbed 3.6% in the fourth quarter of 2024, but fell 8.6% through the year, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed. Its import price index rose 0.2% in the same quarter, but fell 1.9% through the year. These indexes reflect the changes in prices of imports into and exports from the country.
Meanwhile, India’s benchmark Nifty 50 started the day up 0.19% while the BSE Sensex Index opened flat.
Overnight in the U.S., benchmark indexes fell after the Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged in its first policy decision of the year on Wednesday.
The S&P 500 slid 0.47% to close at 6,039.31, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.51% to end at 19,632.32. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 136.83 points, or 0.31%, to 44,713.52.
Artificial intelligence darling Nvidia lost 4.1%, after a strong showing in the previous session.
The chipmaker’s shares hit session lows after reports from Bloomberg News that Trump administration officials had discussed curbing its chip sales to China following the challenge posed by the country’s DeepSeek AI model.
— CNBC’s Lisa Kailan Han and Brian Evans contributed to this report.
