Asian Shares Mixed; China And Hong Kong Outperform

(RTTNews) - Asian markets ended mixed on Wednesday as inflation and trade war fears offset Chinese AI optimism.

Tariff worries prevailed as U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a probe into potential tariffs on copper imports to boost US production of the critical metal.

Treasury yields rebounded but the dollar remained undermined by growth worries. Gold hovered near one-week lows despite rising bets on earlier Fed rate cuts.

Oil bounced off two-month lows after the American Petroleum Institute reported U.S. crude stockpiles fell last week.

If confirmed by the EIA later in the day, it would mark the first decline in U.S. crude oil inventories since mid-January.

China's Shanghai Composite index rallied 1.02 percent to 3,380.21 following Morgan Stanley's upbeat price target revisions for major Chinese banks amid stabilizing credit risks.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng index surged 3.27 percent to 23,787.93 on optimism fueled by AI activity and amid China's efforts to enhance support for the private sector after years of crackdowns.

E-commerce giant Alibaba jumped 4.8 percent after unveiling a public AI model for video and image creation.

Food delivery company Meituan soared 9.8 percent, gaming and technology company Tencent Holdings climbed 3.4 percent and search engine Baidu rose 3.3 percent.

Japanese markets cut early losses to end modestly lower as the yen eased from a four-and-a-half-month high reached in the previous session on worries about the U.S. economic outlook and growing expectations that the Bank of Japan will continue raising interest rates this year.

The Nikkei average fell over 1 percent to touch a four-month low before ending off the day's lows at 38,142.37, down 0.25 percent from its previous close.

Seoul stocks eked out modest gains, with the Kospi average rising 0.41 percent to 2,641.09 - snapping a two-day losing streak.

Tech stocks ended mixed ahead of Nvidia's fourth-quarter earnings release. Samsung Electronics fell over 1 percent while SK Hynix jumped 1.3 percent.

Australian markets ended slightly lower, with mining and gold stocks leading losses. The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.14 percent to 8,240.70 while the broader All Ordinaries index settled 0.24 percent lower at 8,477.30.

Engineering group Worley jumped 10.3 percent after reporting a 55.4 percent rise in first-half net profit and unveiling a $500m share buyback.

Across the Tasman, New Zealand's benchmark S&P/NZX-50 index rallied 1.18 percent to 12,452.46 after six straight sessions of losses.

On Wall Street, the main indexes touched a more than four-month low overnight while the yield on the two-year note hit its lowest since November as weak economic data added to uncertainty over Trump administration policies.

Data showed consumer confidence deteriorated in February at its fastest pace in three-and-a-half years and average 12-month inflation expectations surged, stirring fresh concerns about the state of the economy.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 1.4 percent and the S&P 500 dipped half a percent to end lower for the fourth straight session while the narrower Dow rose 0.4 percent.