Asian shares were trading mixed Tuesday in the absence of key market-driving news in the region, after a seemingly relentless rally continued on Wall Street.
Tokyo trading was closed for a national holiday. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 climbed 0.6% to 8,861.10. South Korea’s Kospi added 0.3% to 3,479.23. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slipped 0.8% to 26,125.56, as investors continued to watch ongoing talks about U.S. tariffs. The Shanghai Composite dropped 1.0% to 3,788.66.
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose 0.4% after erasing a modest loss from the morning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 66 points, or 0.1%, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.7%. It was the third straight day where all three indexes set an all-time high.
“Every time the market seems to be running out of momentum, it fools most of us by pushing to higher heights,” said Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets.
A familiar face was again the strongest force lifting the market: Nvidia. Wall Street’s most valuable company rose 3.9% after announcing a partnership to train and run OpenAI’s next generation of artificial-intelligence models. As part of the deal, Nvidia will invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI.
Oracle also pushed the market higher after climbing 6.3%. A senior official in President Donald Trump’s administration said the tech giant will receive a copy of TikTok’s algorithm to operate for U.S. users, part of the deal to keep the popular platform running in the country.
Oracle also named Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia as its CEOs, with current CEO Safra Catz becoming executive vice chair of the technology company’s board.
Some of the market’s sharpest action was among companies agreeing to buy one another.
Pfizer said it would buy Metsera and its pipeline of medicines to potentially treat obesity in a deal initially valuing it at $4.9 billion. The payout for Metsera investors could go up sharply if its candidates win approval from federal regulators and achieve other milestones.
Metsera’s stock jumped 60.7%, and Pfizer’s edged up by less than 0.1%.
ODP, which runs Office Depot and Office Max, leaped 32.9% after Atlas Holdings agreed to buy it in a deal valued at roughly $1 billion.
All told, the S&P 500 rose 29.39 points to 6,693.75. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 66.27 to 46,381.54, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 157.50 to 22,788.98.
Stocks have surged since April on hopes that Trump’s tariffs won’t derail global trade and that the Fed will deliver several cuts to interest rates to boost the economy. The Fed made its first cut of the year last week, and officials indicated more could arrive through the end of this year and into next.
The U.S. stock market still faces challenges, though. Chief among them is if the Fed does not cut interest rates as many times as investors expect. The Fed is wary because lower rates can give inflation more fuel, and inflation has stubbornly remained above its 2% target.
An update on Friday will show how much prices are rising for U.S. households based on the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, and economists expect it to show a slight acceleration from last month.
In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady. The yield on the 10-year Treasury remained at 4.14%, where it was on Friday.
In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude lost 4 cents to $62.64 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, fell 40 cents to $66.17 a barrel.
In currency trading, the U.S. dollar rose to 147.79 Japanese yen from 147.74 yen. The euro cost $1.1803, inching up from $1.1802.
___
AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed.
