MARKETS: Asia’s strong momentum continues

Asian stock markets rose for a second day in a row after artificial intelligence company Nvidia reported stronger-than-expected numbers on Wednesday.

Especially in Korea, the rise is widespread. While attention has so far been mainly focused on memory companies, investors’ eyes are now more broadly directed towards memory and device manufacturers as well as robotics.

The strong momentum helped the market put the risks of the Middle East conflict in the background. The development pushed MSCI’s broad Asian stock index up 0.8 percent. The regional rise was led by Japan’s Nikkei index, which jumped as much as 2.7 percent.

There was also a strong rise in other parts of Asia. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 1.3 percent, mainland China’s Shanghai Composite rose 0.5 percent.

The market is showing signs of overheating, but Franklin Templeton’s portfolio manager Jonathan Curtis assesses the outlook for the artificial intelligence sector as positive.

“The market hasn’t even priced in what’s going to happen later when companies really start applying technology to their business to improve their bottom line,” Curtis told Bloomberg.

Softbank is rising fast

An investment giant in Tokyo SoftBank was up as much as 13 percent, following the strong price action of its US-listed chip architecture unit, Arm Holdings. In Hong Kong, a computer giant Lenovo Group on the other hand, rose to no less than 26-year highs after reporting strong profit growth in its artificial intelligence segments, reports the news agency Bloomberg.

Gaming company Nintendo reports better than expected sales figures. The company is said to have asked its partners and suppliers to assemble around 20 million next-generation Switch 2 consoles during the fiscal year ending in March. This amount is about 20 percent more than the company’s official sales guidance announced earlier this month.

In turn, the management of the Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek signaled to investors in its ongoing funding round of around 10 billion dollars, or 70 billion yuan, that the company intends to prioritize artificial intelligence research over short-term commercialization.

Oil rises after the day of decline

The price of crude oil turned up after three days of decline. The price of Brent quality hurtled back to more than $104 per barrel, and had risen by about two percent compared to yesterday.

Iran announced yesterday that it will stop keeping near-weapon-grade uranium inside the country, adding to market jitters. However, Iran stated that the new US proposal had partially bridged the gap between the parties.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio commented the situation to the Financial Times in a cautiously positive way.

“There are some good signs in the air that a deal will be reached,” Rubio said, adding that he expected Pakistani mediators to travel to Tehran.

President of Iran Masoud Pezeshkian instead chose a tougher line.

“Iran is holding its ground and we are never going to back down in negotiations,” Pezeshkian announced, according to Bloomberg.

In the foreign exchange market, the Japanese yen moved at 159 levels against the US dollar and remained close to its weakest readings at the end of April. The development was affected more than expected by the slowdown in Japan’s core inflation.

At 08:28, one euro was worth 1.16 dollars, 184.8 yen, 0.86 pounds and 10.8 Swedish kronor. The dollar was 159.0 yen and the pound was 1.34 dollars.