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Asian Markets rose on Tuesday, with Japan’s benchmark approaching the symbolically important 50,000 level for the first time as conservative lawmaker Sanae Takaichi was poised to become the country’s first female prime minister.
The Nikkei 225 in Tokyo was up 0.8% at 49,595.72. Japani MPs are ready to elect Takaichi. He is expected to support market-friendly policies such as lower interest rates and more government spending, although his coalition government does not have a majority in parliament.
The US dollar rose to 151.05 JPY from 150.75 yen. If Takaichi finds a way to slow interest rate hikes by the Bank of Japan, the yen is likely to remain relatively weak against the dollar. That will hamper the bank’s efforts to curb inflation, which is now above the target rate of about 2%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 1.7% at 26,286.47 and the Shanghai Composite Index was up 1.2% at 3,910.13.
There are expectations that the US President donald trump Will meet the Chinese President Xi Jinping There are hopes that trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies will ease during a regional summit later this month.
In South Korea, the Kospi rose 0.5% to 3,833.43, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.8% to 9,099.30.
Taiwan’s Taiex rose 0.3%.
US stocks reached their record high on Monday.
The S&P 500 rose 1.1% to 6,735.13, within 0.3% of its all-time high set earlier this month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 1.1% to 46,706.58. The Nasdaq Composite rose 1.4% to 22,990.54.
Apple It rose 3.9% to its record high amid optimism about demand for its latest iPhone designs. It was the strongest force lifting the S&P 500.
Cleveland-Cliffs jumped 21.5% after steel company CEO Lourenco Goncalves said he would soon provide details about a potential deal with a major global steelmaker that could mean big profits. He also said his company has found signs of potentially rare earths in Michigan and Minnesota.
Such materials have grabbed global headlines after China recently banned exports of its rare earths, a move that President Donald Trump has described as hostile. Trump’s threat of higher tariffs sparked big moves for Wall Street, but concerns eased a bit after Trump said such high tax rates on Chinese imports are unsustainable.
Amazon’s stock remained intact despite a widespread outage of its cloud computing service that caused disruption to Internet users around the world on Monday. Amazon stock rose 1.6%.
Several big names are reporting their latest quarterly results this week, including Coca-Cola on Tuesday, Tesla on Wednesday and Procter & Gamble on Friday.
Companies are under pressure to show that their profits are growing after the S&P 500 surged a massive 35% from its April low. Companies face pressure to improve their profitability to deal with fears that stock prices will become too high.
Corporate profit reports have also been given greater importance because they provide windows into the strength of the US economy at a time when the US government shutdown has delayed important economic updates.
That’s making the Federal Reserve’s job more difficult as it tries to decide whether higher inflation or a slowing job market is the bigger issue for the economy. Fed officials have indicated they may cut rates several times to boost the economy. But that could be a mistake if inflation gets worse, as lower interest rates could make it worse.
On Friday the US government will issue an update on inflation during September. The report was due at the beginning of the month, and the Social Security Administration needs the numbers to calculate cost-of-living adjustments for beneficiaries. But the government also said, “No further releases will be rescheduled or produced until regular government services resume.”
In other deals early Tuesday, U.S. benchmark crude oil fell 12 cents to $56.90 a barrel. Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell 13 cents to $60.88 a barrel.
The euro slipped to $1.1635 from $1.1641.