Asian shares mostly gain after big tech rally on Wall Street

Asian shares mostly gained on Thursday after a rally in U.S. tech stocks lifted the Nasdaq to an all-time high and helped Wall Street claw back most of its losses from earlier in the week.

South Korea’s Kospi climbed 1% to 3,164.26 after the Bank of Korea’s kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged and as semiconductor shares rose following Nvidia’s overnight rally on Wall Street.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.6 % to 39,583.78, while the Hang Seng in Hong Kong added 0.1% to 23,926.09.

The Shanghai Composite index rose 0.4% to 3,505.58 while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 climbed 0.6% to 8,589.70.

The dollar weakened against the Japanese yen and euro and oil prices dropped.

On Wall Street on Wednesday, the S&P 500 rose 0.6% for its first gain this week. The benchmark index remains near the record it set last week after a better-than-expected U.S. jobs report.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.5%. The Nasdaq composite, which is heavily weighted with technology stocks, closed 0.9% higher. The gain was good enough to nudge the index past the record high it set last Thursday.

Nvidia rose 1.8% and became the first public company to exceed $4 trillion in value after its share price briefly topped $164 each in the early going. Shares in the AI boom poster child were going for around $14 per share at the start of 2023.

The tech rally came as Wall Street continued to weigh the latest developments in President Donald Trump’s renewed push this week to use threats of higher tariffs on goods imported into the U.S. in hopes of securing new trade agreements with countries around the globe, with the window for negotiations extended to Aug. 1.

In other dealings on Thursday, benchmark U.S. crude lost 6 cents to $68.32 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, shed 8 cents to $70.14 per barrel.

The dollar was trading at 146.21 Japanese yen, down from 146.26 yen. The euro rose to $1.1736 from $1.1723.

___

AP Business Writer Alex Veiga contributed