Asian markets rebounded on Thursday (Jan 22), tracking gains on Wall Street after US President Donald Trump backed away from his threats to slap new tariffs on European nations.
Markets have been whipped with volatility this week after the US president said at the weekend that he would hammer several nations – including Germany, France, Britain and Denmark – with levies from Feb 1 for their pushback against his grab for Greenland.
But traders breathed a sigh of relief Wednesday when the US president told the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos that he would not take the Danish autonomous territory by force – as he had hinted – and later said he had retracted his tariff threat.
Overnight, the S&P 500 posted its biggest one-day percentage gain in two months, gaining 1.16 per cent.
The Dow Jones Industrial Index and Nasdaq Composite also surged, gaining the most in percentage terms since Jan 5 and Dec 19, respectively. The Dow rose 1.21 per cent while the Nasdaq added 1.18 per cent.
Trump’s comments eased market volatility, with Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taipei and Singapore all up in morning trade.
The gains were also fuelled by a surge in regional tech giants as the artificial intelligence trade roared back into the spotlight after the head of Nvidia said the sector needed “trillions of dollars” more investment.
Nvidia boss Jensen Huang told the WEF that the infrastructure to develop and power generative artificial intelligence models will require much more cash.
He told delegates that today’s AI boom “has started the largest infrastructure buildout in human history”.
“We’re now a few hundred billion dollars into it … there are trillions of dollars of infrastructure that needs to be built out” in fields including energy, cloud computing and electronics.
