Asian equity markets on Thursday opened higher tracing their American peers. Japan’s Nikkei was up over 1.90 percent while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng managed further slipping with a marginal gain of 0.06 percent.
The ease for the indices came in even as the United States-Israel-Iran war continued to seize the broader West Asian region.
The biggest reversal came for the South Korean market, whose Kospi surged close to 12 percent before coming down to 10 percent. The small-cap Kosdaq jumped more than 11 percent.
The sharp rally was disturbed briefly only when the Korea Exchange halted trading on the benchmarks.
Since the onset of the war late last week, Kospi remained among the worst performing indices in the pool of major global equity markets. In its worst trading day ever, Kospi had plunged 12 percent on Wednesday.
The double-digit jump on Thursday helped it regain the majority of the losses incurred during the week.
Earlier to this, the US equity market on March 4 traded with marginal gains after days of intense selling due to the Iran war. The mild recovery was on the back of reports that Iran engaged in backchannel talks with the US to negotiate.
The US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had also said on Wednesday that Washington will announce measures to stabilise oil shipments through the Persian Gulf. This marked another development to ease out tensions on the oil front.
While S&P 500 ended 0.78 percent up on Wednesday, Dow Jones was up close to 0.50 percent. The tech-dominated Nasdaq gained 1.29 percent. The American volatility index was also down 10.27 percent.
The rise in the US and Asian markets is getting reflected in the Indian stock market on Thursday, which fell around 2 percent on Wednesday.
During the early trade hours, the 30-share Sensex climbed over 500 points. Nifty 50 jumped above the 24,600 mark. Both the benchmark indices were up over 0.60 percent.
Indian energy companies traded in green on Thursday. Petronet, which was the worst performer on Wednesday, gained over 1.5 percent to trade at Rs 284 apiece.
Another major oil player, Reliance Industries, opened higher at Rs 1,349.30 on the bourses on Thursday and further rose to Rs 1,384.35 apiece with a 2.86 percent upside during the early trade.
