Asian stocks rose on Thursday, tracking a sharp rise on Wall Street, with Japan's Nikkei 225 index surging above 42,000 points for the first time.
The U.S. stock market hit new all-time highs on Wednesday, driven by big tech companies whose shares soared on the frenzy around artificial intelligence.
Hopes of lower interest rates also pushed markets higher.
The Nikkei 225 jumped 0.8% to 42,179.84, again surpassing its all-time high after closing at records on Tuesday and Wednesday.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index rose 1.1% to 17,667.58.
The Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.7% to 2,959.25, while Seoul's Kospi gained 0.8% to 2,891.34.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 index rose 1% to 7,894.30 points. Taiwan's Taiex gained 1.1%, while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. jumped 2.4%.
U.S.-listed shares of TSMC rose 3.5% after the company reported that its revenue rose nearly 33% in June from a year earlier. The company makes chips for Nvidia and others that have pushed the business world to embrace artificial intelligence technology.
The promise of big profits in the future from AI has propelled Nvidia in particular to dizzying heights over the past year, and Nvidia rose another 2.7% on Wednesday to bring its year-to-date gain to 172.5%. It was again the most powerful force pushing the S&P 500 higher as the rally on Wall Street extended into a seventh day as big tech companies paved the way.
The S&P 500 jumped 1% and surpassed the 5,600-point mark for the first time, closing at 5,633.91.
The Nasdaq Composite rose 1.2% to 18,647.45 points and the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.1% to
Advanced Micro Devices was the other major force behind the stock market rally, jumping 3.9% after announcing a $665 million deal to buy Silo AI, a European AI lab.
Markets hit record highs despite a slowing US economy and tighter monetary policy. pressure on low-income households.
Hope that inflation The slowdown in economic activity is significant enough that the Federal Reserve could deliver long-awaited interest rate cuts later this year, which is also boosting buyer enthusiasm.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell returned to Capitol Hill to testify on interest rates, where he echoed many of his comments from the day before. He said he was not sending any signals about when rate cuts might come, but he highlighted the downsides of coming too late.
“More positive data would boost our confidence and pave the way for a reduction,” Powell said.
Much of Wall Street expects the Fed to begin cutting its main interest rate in September, but traders have a a long history of precipitationPowell acknowledged a recent improvement in inflation, but reiterated that the Fed was not convinced that inflation was heading sustainably toward its 2% target.
On Thursday, the U.S. government will release its latest monthly update on inflation. Economists expect that American consumers paid 3.1% higher prices for food, airfare and everything else in June than they did a year earlier. That would be slightly slower than May’s 3.3% inflation rate.
While the Federal Reserve is keen to see more positive data, US inflation will play an important role in validating whether markets are pricing in a rate cut as early as September this year, IG's Yeap Jun Rong said in a commentary.
This week will also mark the unofficial start of the new earnings season. Delta Air Lines, JPMorgan Chase and others will report their spring earnings from April through June, and Wall Street is hoping that the S&P 500 companies will post their strongest growth in more than two years.
In other trading, benchmark U.S. crude oil gained 75 cents to $82.85 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, gained 79 cents to $85.87 a barrel.
The US dollar fell from 161.66 to 161.60 Japanese yen. The euro rose from 1.0832 to 1.0839 dollars.
AP Business reporter Stan Choe contributed to this report.
