Asia-Pacific markets opened higher Tuesday, after Wall Street’s tech stocks rebounded on a rally in Google parent and hopes of a Fed rate cut. Optimism about Alphabet’s standing in the AI race started last week after the tech giant announced its upgraded AI model, Gemini 3. The stock closed 6.31% higher Monday. Other AI-related stocks, such as Broadcom and Micron Technology, also popped higher, building on a wider rebound that started on Friday, when the head of the New York Federal Reserve left the door open to a December interest rate cut. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index climbed 1.14% in early trading, while the Topix index advanced 0.7%. South Korea’s Kospi index jumped 2.39%, and the small-cap Kosdaq moved up 1.7%. Index heavyweights SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics were up as much as 5% and 4%, respectively.
Stocks closed higher on Monday, boosted by Alphabet, as the market rebounded into the Thanksgiving holiday week after a slide that knocked the air out of this year’s artificial intelligence bull run. The S&P 500 increased 1.55% to close at 6,705.12, while the Nasdaq Composite jumped 2.69% to settle at 22,872.01. It was the tech-heavy index’s best day since May 12, when it rose 4.35%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded up 202.86 points, or 0.44%, to end at 46,448.27. Shares of Alphabet saw gains Monday as investors grew optimistic about the company’s standing in the AI race. Google last week announced its upgraded AI model, Gemini 3, a move that comes nearly eight months after its unveiling of Gemini 2.5. The stock was up 6.3%.
Gold prices rose to around $4,140 per ounce on Tuesday, building on gains from the previous session as expectations for a US interest rate cut next month increased further after dovish Fed signals. Bullion surged nearly 2% on Monday after Fed Governor Christopher Waller reiterated his support for a December cut, citing persistent weakness in the US labour market. On Friday, New York Fed President John Williams also indicated that a near-term reduction remains a possibility. Markets now assign an 81% probability to a 25bps cut in December, up sharply from around 40% a week ago. Investor focus now turns to September retail sales and PPI data due later today, as well as weekly jobless claims on Wednesday, for further clues on the health of the US economy and the likely path of Fed policy.
WTI crude oil futures edged down to $58.7 per barrel on Tuesday, paring gains from the previous session, as prospects for a Russia-Ukraine peace deal continue to dominate market sentiment. Reports suggest that the US-proposed 28-point peace plan aimed at ending the Ukraine war has been reduced to 19 points after discussions in Switzerland as they try to make the framework more acceptable to Ukraine, though it remains unclear which points were removed. Should a deal materialize, it could lead to the easing of sanctions on Russian oil, which could bring additional supply back into a market already bracing for a significant surplus next year.
President Donald Trump spoke on the phone with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday morning, a White House official confirmed to CNBC. Specifics about the call, including why it was scheduled or who requested it, were not immediately clear. The White House did not provide details about what was discussed, but Trump on Monday later confirmed the call in a post on Truth Social. “We discussed many topics including Ukraine/Russia, Fentanyl, Soybeans and other Farm Products, etc. We have done a good, and very important, deal for our Great Farmers — and it will only get better,” Trump wrote. “Our relationship with China is extremely strong!” He also noted that the two leaders had agreed to reciprocal in-person meetings. The first will be a meeting in Beijing in April. A state visit in the U.S. will be scheduled later in the year, Trump wrote. “We agreed that it is important that we communicate often, which I look forward to doing,” Trump wrote.
Ukrainian officials have spent the weekend scrambling to make up lost ground when it comes to talks with the U.S. over a peace plan to end the war with Russia, with Kyiv having to tread a fine line between showing the U.S. it’s willing to engage in discussions, while anxious to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity. Talks between U.S. and Ukrainian officials were held in Switzerland over the weekend after it emerged last week that Russia and the White House had held secret discussions and had devised a 28-point peace plan which largely favoured Moscow’s demands. The plan, which Ukraine had not participated in, included controversial conditions, including that Ukraine make territorial and military concessions by handing over the eastern Donbas region and reducing its army by 50%, as well as other proposals that crossed Ukraine’s “red lines.”
President Donald Trump has appointed two Department of Commerce officials to oversee U.S. Steel under the golden share agreement reached with Japan’s Nippon, according to a letter posted Monday in the Federal Register. Trump approved U.S. Steel’s controversial acquisition by Nippon in June after securing veto rights over key business decisions under a golden share arrangement. U.S. Steel stopped trading on the New York Stock Exchange that same month after the acquisition was completed. Trump holds the veto powers covered by the golden share as U.S. president, but he can also designate someone else to wield those authorities as his representative if he wants. The president appointed William Kimmitt, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, as his designee in a letter to U.S. Steel.
Chinese business dealings in Africa, once dominated by state-owned enterprises, are now increasingly shifting toward consumer products from the private sector. While Africa’s faster-growing economies, such as Kenya, Uganda and Zambia, see annual growth rates of 4.8%, 6.4% and 5.8%, respectively, the GDP of the overall continent’s 50-plus countries is 4.1%. That is according to IMF’s economic outlook report last month. Chinese investments in Africa’s resource-intensive sectors have declined by roughly 40% since their 2015 peak, amid weaker returns and falling construction revenues in traditional commodity industries, according to Rhodium Group China Cross-Border Monitor released on Nov. 18 this year.
Amazon said Monday it will invest as much as $50 billion to expand its capacity to provide artificial intelligence and high-performance computing capabilities for its cloud unit’s U.S. government customers. The project is slated to break ground in 2026 and will add nearly 1.3 gigawatts of capacity through new data centers designed for federal agencies, the company said in a blog. As part of the investment, agencies will have access to Amazon Web Services’ AI tools, Anthropic’s Claude family of models and Nvidia chips as well as Amazon’s custom Trainium AI chips. The move follows similar announcements from Anthropic and Meta to expand AI data centers in the U.S. Oracle, OpenAI and SoftBank announced their Stargate joint venture in January, which aims to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure in the U.S. over the next four years.
Apple has cut dozens of jobs across its sales organization as it looks to streamline how it offers products to businesses, schools and governments, Bloomberg News reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. The iPhone maker notified affected employees over the past couple of weeks, Bloomberg said, including account managers serving major businesses, schools and government agencies. Staff who operate Apple’s briefing centers for institutional meetings and product demonstrations for prospective customers were also affected, the report said. Apple did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. One of the major targets of the layoffs was a government sales team working with agencies, including the U.S. Defence Department and Justice Department, per the report.
Zoom Communications raised its annual revenue and profit forecasts on Monday, benefiting from hybrid work trends and the integration of artificial intelligence into its products. Shares of the company rose 3.5% in extended trading. Zoom has intensified its push to embed AI functionalities across its products and broaden its service offerings to capitalize on the demand for hybrid work solutions. New products such as Phone, Contact Center and Virtual Agent, are driving the majority of Zoom’s growth. "We’re also seeing strong momentum with Custom AI Companion and our AI-first Customer Experience suite, which helped make this one of our best CX quarters, with broad AI adoption across major deals," CEO Eric Yuan said. Demand for AI agents, which are programs that can act autonomously to perform specific tasks, has been growing as companies embrace the new technology to automate workflows and improve efficiency.
Alibaba Group shares jumped on Monday after its revamped consumer AI app, Qwen, registered a very strong start in public beta, sparking fresh investor optimism about its push into the generative-AI market. The app logged more than 10 million downloads in the week following its relaunch, according to the company’s WeChat blog post. Hong Kong-listed shares of the company climbed to HK$156.10 as of 06:45 GMT. In a statement published last week, Alibaba said the Qwen chatbot -- powered by its advanced Qwen large language model -- is now available via mobile and web, with international rollout planned later. The app, which can generate complex research reports and multi-slide PowerPoint presentations from a single prompt, was described by the company as “the best personal AI assistant with the most powerful model.”