Lujiazui Business Districk in Pudong, Shanghai, China.
Liqun Liu | Construction Photography | Hulton Archive | Getty Images
Asia-Pacific markets were set to climb Wednesday, after Wall Street traded mixed on hopes that the record-setting U.S. government shutdown could be nearing an end and AI trade stumbling.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index was set for a higher open, with its futures contract in Chicago trading at 51,190, and its counterpart in Osaka at 51,110, against the index’s Tuesday close of 50,842.93.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was flat.
Futures for Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index pointed to a slightly higher open, trading at 26,865, against the index’s previous close of 26,696.41.
Investors will be keeping a close eye on SoftBank shares as well as tech stocks in Asia after ithe Japanese giant said Tuesday it sold its entire stake in U.S. chipmaker Nvidia for $5.83 billion, as it looks to capitalize on its “all in” bet on ChatGPT maker OpenAI.
Overnight in the U.S., the three major averages closed mixed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied to a fresh closing record Tuesday, while the Nasdaq Composite struggled as investors moved money away from technology stocks into other parts of the market that traded at lower valuations.
The 30-stock Dow rose 559.33 points, or 1.18%, to close at 47,927.96, with those on Wall Street buying up shares of various blue-chip names, including health care giants Merck, Amgen and Johnson & Johnson. The S&P 500 also rose 0.21% to finish at 6,846.61. However, the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 0.25% to settle at 23,468.30.
— CNBC’s Sean Conlon and Pia Singh contributed to this report.
