Shares opened higher in Japan, South Korea and Australia, helping the MSCI Asia Pacific Index extend its advance to a third day. A rebound in the battered software stocks drove the Nasdaq 100 up 1.1%, while the S&P 500 also advanced, ahead of the key earnings from Nvidia Corp. on Wednesday. Advanced Micro Devices Inc.’s deal with Meta Platforms Inc. also boosted sentiment.
A Bloomberg gauge of the dollar was steady ahead of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address late in Washington Tuesday. Treasuries were a touch lower with the yield on the benchmark 10-year rising almost one basis point to 4.04%. Gold pared some losses from the prior session, while Bitcoin headed for its worst month since crypto’s collapse of June 2022.
The disruptive potential of artificial intelligence has roiled stocks across sectors for weeks in what’s become known as the AI scare trade. Tuesday’s rebound followed comments from Anthropic PBC, which said it plans to build partnerships — easing concerns that its Claude chatbot technology will integrate with, rather than displace, existing businesses.
“This ‘we’re here to help, not hurt’ message from Anthropic is helping to trigger a fairly healthy rebound rally in software,” said Adam Crisafulli at Vital Knowledge.
Before Tuesday’s recovery, investors had been skittish for weeks on AI-related selloffs targeting a range of industries such as software, insurance brokerage, wealth management and cybersecurity, among others. Earlier this week, concerns over tariffs and geopolitics coupled with a report by Citrini Research and worries about the potential disruption caused by another tool from Anthropic were enough to send the stock market careening.While US stocks have been volatile, Asian markets have outperformed their global peers and largely avoided the tech volatility. The standout gainer was South Korea, which advanced as much as 1.2% to a record on Wednesday.
South Korea’s Kospi Index has gained about 43% this year and is the world’s best-performing stock market.
