An electronic board shows Shanghai and Shenzhen stock indices as people walk on a pedestrian bridge at the Lujiazui financial district in Shanghai, China April 3, 2025.
Go Nakamura | Reuters
Asia-Pacific markets opened mostly higher Friday as investors assessed a truce between Washington and Beijing, following a meeting between President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
They reached a trade deal of sorts during a high-stakes meeting in South Korea on Thursday, de-escalating a dispute over rare earth elements that had threatened to push the world’s two largest economies into a full-blown trade war.
“Both sides appear to be maintaining leverage for future negotiations by keeping these measures as bargaining chips,” said JPMorgan Asset Management’s global market strategist, Chaoping Zhu.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose over 1% to hit a fresh record, while the Topix added 0.79%, also scaling a new peak.
South Korea’s Kospi slid 0.19% after hitting a fresh record high on Thursday. The small-cap Kosdaq rose 0.47%.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 started the day 0.45% higher.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was poised to fall. HSI futures were at 26,256, lower than the HSI’s last close of 26,282.69.
Shares of Panasonic Holdings declined over 8% after the firm lowered its forecast for full-year operating profit by 13.5% on Thursday, citing a decline in expected profit from its key energy unit, which supplies batteries to Tesla and other automaker.
China is set to release its purchasing managers’ index for October later today, which provides a snapshot of factory and services activity that investors widely track.
Overnight in the U.S., all three major averages closed lower as investors digested a batch of Big Tech earnings. The S&P 500 dipped 0.99% to finish the day at 6,822.34, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.57% to close at 23,581.14. The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded down 109.88 points, or 0.23%, to 47,522.12.
— CNBC’s Sean Conlon and Sarah Min contributed to this report.