Asian stocks got a boost from Wall Street on Wednesday thanks to a new wave of optimism around artificial intelligence, as investors braced for a busy day led by the Federal Reserve’s decision and earnings from tech heavyweights.
The prospect of lower US interest rates this week supported bonds, while the dollar suffered losses as investors bet that the Fed’s expected rate cut on Wednesday would not be the last of the year.
Overnight, Wall Street closed at record highs after upbeat news from Nvidia and Microsoft, with the former announcing $500 billion in bookings for its AI chips and building seven supercomputers for the US Department of Energy.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has reached a deal that allows OpenAI to restructure itself into a public benefit corporation, giving the software giant a 27 percent stake in the maker of ChatGPT.
That helped lift shares in Asia, with the broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan, MSCI, rising 0.16 percent, while Japan’s Nikkei jumped more than 1 percent to hit another record, SEEbiz reported.
South Korea’s Kospi similarly hit a record high, helped by strong earnings and an upbeat outlook from SK Hynix, Nvidia’s supplier.
The “Magnificent Seven” tech titans Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta are scheduled to report earnings later on Wednesday, where expectations are high that they will deliver strong results to justify inflated estimates.
