A HDR evening shot taken at sunset of the Tokyo skyline.
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Asia-Pacific markets rose Friday, after the White House said that U.S. President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping were set to hold talks next week.
U.S. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump will leave for Malaysia late Friday and then travel to Japan and South Korea, meeting Xi next Thursday after speaking at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO Summit, Reuters reported.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index climbed 0.78%, while the Topix added 0.39%. Japan’s core inflation rate accelerated to 2.9% in September, the first increase since May and in line with expectations from economists polled by Reuters.
This was higher than the 2.7% seen in August. The core inflation metric in Japan strips out the prices of fresh food but includes energy costs.
Headline inflation in Japan also climbed to 2.9% from 2.7% the previous month.
South Korea’s Kospi jumped 1.35% and the small-cap Kosdaq was 0.92% higher.
Australia’s ASX/S&P 200 was trading 0.19% higher on open.
Futures of Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index pointed to a stronger open, trading at 26,139 against the index’s previous close of 25,967.98.
Overnight, the three major averages closed higher. The S&P 500 climbed 0.58% to close at 6,738.44, boosted by tech stocks, after a batch of strong earnings results.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded up 144.20 points, or 0.31%, to finish at 46,734.61. The Nasdaq Composite outperformed, rising 0.89% to settle at 22,941.80, seeing support from the gains in Nvidia, Broadcom and Amazon. A nearly 3% jump in shares of fellow artificial intelligence player Oracle also boosted sentiment.
— CNBC’s Sean Conlon, Pia Singh and Lim Hui Jie contributed to this report.