Sep 25 ,2026
Synopsis:
Asia equities ended mixed Friday in a quiet day's trading. Japan's two main boards saw some strong gains while India and Singapore were also higher. Hong Kong and Australia benchmarks ended lower but away from their lows. Southeast Asia was mixed. Holidays in mainland China, South Korea and Taiwan. US futures higher, Europe opened with gains. US dollar lower just as the yen strengthened in afternoon trade after finance minister Katayama warned on intervention; won also noticeably stronger, yuan quiet. Treasuries and JGBs mixed. Crude oil sharply lower from overnight spike but Brent still just a shade below $100/bl. Precious metals higher, base metals mixed.
Asia markets advanced Friday to round off a largely stronger week albeit amid low volumes and holidays. Technology stocks again led in Japan as South Korea and Taiwan remained closed although focus remained on JGBs and forex markets where 10Y yields rose to more than 30-year highs while, late on, the yen weakened to reverse Thursday's gains.
Elsewhere, investor attention was on President Xi's visit to the US but there was little fresh substantive newsflow on trade, Taiwan, or Iran. Commentators instead expressed some concerns over the short length of the extension to the trade war truce, while some soft commodity prices fell on the lack of a significant agriculture deal. For the week, the regional MSCI Asia Pac ex Japan index advanced slightly with outperformance in South Korea and Taiwan, and underperformance in Australia and Greater China. Japan's Nikkei outperformed the Topix.
In corporate developments, China Life Insurance (2628.HK) said it would launch a CNY20B investment fund that focused on semiconductors, AI and biomedicine. SoftBank (9984.JP) stock fell after confirming details of its $11B junk bond sale. SMBC (Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (8316.JP) is in talks to increase its stake in Vietnam-based VPBank, according to a Reuters report.
Digest:
Notable Gainers:
+8.1% 4716.JP (Oracle Corp Japan): reports Q1 net income attributable ¥18.25B vs FactSet ¥16B
+6.5% 659.HK (CTF Services): proposes new 1-for-10 bonus issue for existing shareholders
+2.4% 3407.JP (Asahi Kasei): president Koshiro Kudo says operating income for this FY is on track to be close to ¥270B
+1.0% 9005.JP (Tokyu Corp): reports August railway passenger revenue ¥12.96B, +3.1% y/y
Notable Decliners:
-3.2% 9984.JP (SoftBank Group): plans record sales of $11.1B high-yield bonds to invest in OpenAI
-2.9% 2628.HK (China Life Insurance): to launch CNY20B investment fund focused on chips, biomedicine, AI
-0.1% 7269.JP (Suzuki Motor): plans to halve the development cycle of new vehicles, while improving R&D efficiency by 30% and production efficiency by 50% by 2030
+0% 600547.CH (Shandong Gold Mining): lowers FY gold production guidance to 36-38 tons from prior guidance of at least 49 tons
Data:
Economic:
No economic data today
Markets:
Nikkei: 850.21 or +1.30% to 66364.20
Hang Seng: (251.04) or (1.01%) to 24510.09
Shanghai Composite: Closed
Shenzhen Composite: Closed
ASX200: (37.00) or (0.43%) to 8665.00
KOSPI: Closed
SENSEX: (9.19) or (0.01%) to 73571.35
Currencies:
$-¥: (0.73) or (0.46%) to 158.1280
$-KRW: (15.00) or (1.09%) to 1355.3100
A$-$: +0.00 or +0.19% to 0.7026
$-INR: (0.15) or (0.15%) to 95.8378
$-CNY: (0.00) or (0.03%) to 6.7104
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