SK Hynix profit of 83.3 trillion won lifts Asia stocks

South Korea's Kospi index closed Wednesday at 6,023.73, marking a 6.8% gain that led a mostly positive session across Asian markets. The rally followed a strong performance on Wall Street Tuesday, where artificial intelligence stocks pushed the S&P 500 within 1.2% of its all-time high set earlier this month.

The primary catalyst in Seoul was memory chipmaker SK Hynix. The company reported an operating profit of 83.3 trillion won, or $62.8 billion, for the latest quarter. This figure represented a nearly seven-fold increase from the same period a year earlier and exceeded market estimates. SK Hynix shares jumped 11.4% to their highest level in two weeks. Samsung Electronics, which is scheduled to report its third-quarter earnings Thursday, also surged 9.1%.

Gains extended to other major Asian economies. Japan's Nikkei 225 rose 1.1% to 63,954.19. Kioxia Holdings, a semiconductor maker, climbed 9.6% in anticipation of its quarterly earnings report due Friday. In Taipei, the Taiex index advanced 2%. The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong recovered 0.2% to 23,089.22 after erasing earlier losses, while Shanghai's Composite index edged 0.5% higher to 3,666.50.

The week is busy for central banks. The Bank of Japan is expected to keep its interest rate unchanged during a two-day policy meeting starting Thursday. Markets had previously anticipated that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand would also hold steady, and it did so on Wednesday, keeping its benchmark rate at 2.75%. The S&P/NZX 50 index in New Zealand edged 0.1% higher.

On Wall Street Tuesday, the Nasdaq composite climbed 1.2% while the Dow Jones Industrial Average added less than 0.1%. The S&P 500 rose 0.6% despite the majority of its constituent stocks falling. Broadcom climbed 4% after announcing a $63 billion financing deal that allows Anthropic to access Broadcom's XPU AI accelerators and networking solutions. Nvidia added 0.9%, and CoreWeave, a cloud company that rents out AI chips, jumped 7.9%.

Not all sectors performed well. Boeing fell 10.7% after reporting a larger quarterly loss than analysts expected. In India, the Sensex fell 0.8%, though Jio Platforms surged 21% in its market debut following the country's largest initial public offering. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.3% to 8,847.30.

Oil prices rose alongside equities. Brent crude, the international standard, increased 1.5% to $111.10 per barrel. U.S. benchmark crude gained 1.6% to $101.46 per barrel. The U.S. dollar slid to 157.85 Japanese yen from 157.91 yen, while the euro traded at $1.1118, down from $1.1127.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 4.99% from 5.00% late Monday. This occurred a day before the Federal Reserve is scheduled to announce its latest interest rate decision. The Fed hiked rates for the first time in three years last month to combat inflation, but widespread expectation on Wall Street is that it will hold rates steady this time.