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View all search resultsJapan index hits record high on earnings boost, other Asian markets ease
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A woman walks past a screen displaying Japan's Nikkei share average outside a brokerage in Tokyo on July 8, 2025. (Reuters/Issei Kato)
J
apanese shares surged on Friday after positive earnings reports and expectations the US would remove overlapping tariffs on the country's goods, while shares were down in other Asian markets after a late retreat on Wall Street during the previous session.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan slipped 0.4 percent with Hong Kong's market leading declines, after US stocks ended the previous session with mild losses after nearing a one-week high.
Meanwhile, Japanese stocks soared, with the Nikkei 225 up 2 percent and the Topix index hitting a fresh record, trading above 3,000 for the first time.
Shares in SoftBank Group rallied as much as 11 percent after the technology investor reported that it swung back to profit in the first quarter. Sony Group gained 6 percent, adding to its earnings-fuelled 4.1 percent advance from Thursday.
US stock futures, the S&P 500 e-minis, were up 0.3 percent, while Nasdaq futures rose 0.4 percent, on track to extend gains into a third day.
The rally for stocks comes "against the backdrop of an emerging titanic dovish pivot at the Federal Reserve," said Tony Sycamore, market analyst at IG in Sydney.
US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he would nominate Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Stephen Miran for the vacant seat at the Federal Reserve while the White House seeks a permanent addition to the central bank's governing board and continues its search for a new Fed chair.
The market is also digesting a Bloomberg News report that Fed Governor Christopher Waller is the top candidate to replace Chair Jerome Powell, whose term ends on May 15, 2026.
The yield on benchmark 10-year Treasury notes rose to 4.2461 percent, up from the US close of 4.244 percent on Thursday, after weak demand at an auction of 30-year bonds, the latest in a string of lacklustre sales this week.
The rally for Japanese stocks follows a mixed bag of earnings reports for the country's biggest exporters, as some companies like Toyota Motor slashed their profit forecasts, while Sony and Honda said the impact would be less than feared.
As the effective date of recent US trade duties arrived, Tokyo's trade negotiator said the US government on Thursday promised it would fine-tune some of its overlapping tariffs on Japanese goods to avoid the duties being paid on some products twice.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index fell 0.6 percent, with technology shares leading declines and China's blue-chip CSI 300 index slipped 0.1 percent. Australian stocks were 0.2 percent lower.
The dollar rose 0.1 percent against the yen to 147.27.
Japanese household spending data released Friday, which provides clues to consumption and wage trends that the Bank of Japan is monitoring to determine the timing of its next rate hike, rose at a slower-than-anticipated 1.3 percent.
The European single currency was flat at $1.1669, having gained 2.23 percent in a month, while the dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of currencies of other major trading partners, was up 0.2 percent at 98.124.
In commodity markets, Brent futures were unchanged at $66.45, while US crude futures were little changed at $63.81 a barrel. Gold was 0.4 percent lower, with bullion last trading at $3391.157 per ounce.
