Japanese Banks Rise as Chinese Financial Shares Fall in Mixed Asian Trading

Asian markets traded mixed on Thursday morning after a weak Wall Street session and a jump in U.S. Treasury yields following the Federal Reserve's rate announcement and the first press conference by new chair Kevin Warsh. The Dow Jones fell 1% overnight, the S&P 500 lost 1.2%, and the Nasdaq dropped 1.4%. In early Asia trading, Japan's Nikkei rose 1.7% and South Korea's Kospi gained 0.6%, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 1.8% and Shanghai slipped 0.1%.

Oil prices also declined, with Brent down 1.3% to $78.5 a barrel and WTI down 1.6% to $75.6. Japanese bank shares led gains, as Mitsubishi Financial advanced 3% and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial climbed 3.7%. Local semiconductor stocks were also stronger, with Screen up 6.5%, Lasertec up 5.7%, and Tokyo Electron up 3.5%.

Murata and Ibiden were the biggest boosts to the Nikkei, jumping 13% and 8.3% respectively. At the other end, gaming company Konami fell 6.8%, while rival Nintendo weakened 2.2%.

In Seoul, SK Hynix rose 4.2% to a new record after saying it had begun supplying initial samples of its new HBM4E memory chips to leading customers. The HBM line is a key component for advanced artificial intelligence systems.

Hong Kong was pressured by declines in major Chinese financial and property stocks. Bank of China fell 2%, Agricultural Bank of China dropped 2.7%, China Life Insurance slid 4.5%, and China Overseas Land & Investment lost 5.4%, near the bottom of the Hang Seng.