Asian stock exchanges inconsistent: AI euphoria and US-China summit in focus

AI euphoria and global conflicts are the dominant themes on the Asian stock exchanges. The Japanese stock market is trending higher, the markets in China are falling.

Tokyo. Before the meeting of the heads of state from the USA and China, the Asian stock exchanges did not find a common direction. In Tokyo, the leading index Nikkei started to catch up on Thursday after a holiday break of several days. Chinese stock exchanges fell:

The Nikkei index, which includes 225 stocks, rose by one percent to 65,647 points.

The broader Topix was trading 0.1 percent lower at 4,085 points.

The Shanghai Stock Exchange lost 1.1 percent to 3,894 points.

The CSI 300 index of the 300 most important Chinese companies on the mainland stock exchanges fell 1.6 percent to 4,446 points.

The introduction of a new AI device from Meta created a buying mood for technology stocks. The US company presented the mobile device “Meta Charm” and thus fueled demand for computer components. The biggest winners included shares of CPU suppliers Ibiden and Socionext, each rising by around 15 percent.

“In recent trading days, chip stocks have tended to hold their own against rising yields,” said Kazuaki Shimada, chief strategist at IwaiCosmo Securities. Driven by concerns about inflation, the yield on the ten-year Japanese government bond climbed to 3.075 percent, its highest level since August 1996.

This weighed on banking stocks such as Mitsubishi UFJ, Sumitomo Mitsui and Mizuho. The markets in China fell. The Shanghai stock exchange lost 1.1 percent to 3,893 points. The index of the most important companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen fell by 1.5 percent to 4,447 points.

US President Donald Trump will receive Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House on Thursday for a large-scale state summit. According to analysts, concrete results are likely to be limited to an extension of the ceasefire in the trade dispute, which expires in November, and an agreement to investigate the dangers posed by artificial intelligence.

However, relaxation of chip export controls from the US side is not expected, said Sanjeev Rana, analyst at CLSA.

More: Trump ensnares Xi and risks the next trade war