LDN Business - Global Markets

Asian shares are mixed as investors focus on US trade talks with China

[July 29, 2025] By YURI KAGEYAMA

TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares were mixed Tuesday ahead of a second day of trade talks between Chinese and U.S. officials, while U.S. futures and oil prices rose.

Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 fell 0.8% to 40,674.55 on broad selling of major companies including automakers and big banks.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 0.6% to 25,398.83, while the Shanghai Composite gained 0.3% to 3,607.41.

Analysts said investors were watching for the latest from U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. trade talks with talks with China in Stockholm. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng were meeting in the Swedish capital.

“Aside from addressing economic imbalances, tariffs are also now well entrenched in the geo-political arena,” Tan Boon Heng of the Asia & Oceania Treasury Department at Mizuho Bank said in a commentary.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged 0.1% higher to 8,704.60. South Korea’s Kospi gained 0.3% to 3,230.57.

U.S. stock indexes drifted through a quiet Monday after the United States agreed to tax cars and other products coming from the European Union at a 15% rate, lower than Trump had threatened.

Many details of the trade deal are still to be worked out, and Wall Street is heading into a week full of potential flashpoints that could shake markets, including an interest rate decision Wednesday by the Federal Reserve.

The widespread expectation on Wall Street is that Fed officials will wait until September to resume cutting interest rates, though a couple of Trump’s appointees could dissent in the vote. The Fed has been on hold with interest rates this year since cutting them several times at the end of 2024.

The S&P 500 was nearly flat, edging up by less than 0.1% to 6,389.77 and setting an all-time high for a sixth straight day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 0.1% to 44,837.56, while the Nasdaq composite added 0.3% to its own record, closing at 21,178.58.

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Persons walk in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Tuesday, July 29, 2025, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Tesla rose 3% after its CEO, Elon Musk, said it had signed a deal with Samsung Electronics that could be worth more than $16.5 billion to provide computer chips for the electric-vehicle company. Samsung’s stock in South Korea jumped 6.8% on Monday, but only 0.3% on Tuesday.

Other companies in the chip and artificial-intelligence industries were strong, continuing their run from last week after Alphabet said it was increasing its spending on AI chips and other investments to $85 billion this year. Chip company Advanced Micro Devices rose 4.3%, and server-maker Super Micro Computer climbed 10.2%.

But an 8.3% drop for Revvity helped to keep the market in check. The company in the life sciences and diagnostics businesses reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than Wall Street expected, but its forecast for full year profit disappointed analysts.

Companies are broadly under pressure to deliver solid growth in profits following big jumps in their stock prices the last few months. Much of the gain was due to hopes that Trump would walk back some of his stiff proposed tariffs, and critics say the U.S. stock market looks expensive unless companies will produce bigger profits.

Hundreds of U.S. companies are lined up to report how much profit they made during the spring, with nearly a third of the businesses in the S&P 500 index scheduled to deliver updates.

In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude gained 2 cents to $66.73 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, picked up 5 cents to $69.37 a barrel.

In currency trading, the U.S. dollar fell to 148.39 Japanese yen from 148.56 yen. The euro cost $1.1560, down from $1.1589.

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