Finance Morning | Asia Stocks Rally Broadly as Hang Seng Reclaims 24,000; Nikkei Tops 70,000

📊 Today's Asian Markets

1. Asia-Pacific Stocks Rally Broadly; Hang Seng Reclaims 24,000

Source: Sina Finance

On October 5, risk appetite across Asia-Pacific recovered markedly, with regional benchmarks posting broad gains. Taiwan's weighted index jumped 2.55% to 49,712.04, within touching distance of 50,000, while Tokyo's Nikkei 225 rose 2.40% to 69,946.86. India's Mumbai Sensex gained 0.56% and South Korea's composite index added 0.46%, while New Zealand and Australia edged up 0.14% and 0.05% respectively.

Hong Kong shares, which had been under pressure, staged a recovery. The Hang Seng opened weak and traded in a tight range through the morning before buyers stepped in late in the afternoon, lifting the index back above the 24,000 mark in the final minutes of trading for a gain of 0.28%. The China Enterprises Index rose 0.26% and the Hang Seng Tech Index added 0.62%. On October 2 the Hang Seng had tumbled 2.60%, at one point touching 23,865.

By sector, cosmetics, PCB, building efficiency and optical communications names moved in turn, but PCB and chip stocks were the clear focus. Kingboard Laminates rose 11.94%, Sunmi Technology-W jumped 10.76%, Fourier climbed 22.68%, Montage Technology added 5.25% and SMIC gained 1.74%. Overseas, Nvidia closed up 1.34% on Friday to a fresh record, pushing its market value toward the $6 trillion mark, while the US Philadelphia Semiconductor Index surged 2.40% to a second-half high.

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2. Nikkei 225 Tops 70,000 Intraday for First Time in Three Months

Source: China Financial Information Network

Buoyed by gains in all three major New York indices in the previous session, Tokyo's two main gauges opened higher on October 5. AI and semiconductor shares led the advance, pushing the Nikkei 225 above 70,000 intraday for the first time in about three months; profit-taking trimmed the gains in the afternoon. By the close, the Nikkei 225 was up 2.40% at 69,946.86 and the TOPIX was up 1.33% at 4,145.22.

Among individual names, semiconductor test-equipment maker Advantest rose sharply, setting a listing high for a second straight session, while AI-related stocks such as Tokyo Electron and SoftBank Group and MLCC-related names including Murata Manufacturing and Taiyo Yuden also gained. Of the Tokyo Stock Exchange's 33 sector groups, most advanced, led by electrical products, glass and ceramic products, and chemicals, while electric power and gas, mining, and marine transport fell.

Some market participants said that although higher long-term rates are a headwind for richly valued AI growth stocks, investor expectations for earnings growth still held the upper hand. However, Yasuji Yajima, an executive researcher at the Japan Research Institute of Life Planning, said that with the market focusing on US long-term rates approaching 6%, stocks could come under pressure.

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3. TSMC Shares Jump as Much as 3.2% to a Record High

Source: Guandian

On October 5, TSMC shares rose as much as 3.2% intraday to a record high. They had earlier climbed 3% in the morning session after Musk confirmed he was in talks with TSMC over cooperation on the TeraFab project.

The same day, Taiwan's stock market rose as much as 2.7%, hitting a record high of 49,770.66.

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4. Huawei and Qualcomm Announce Broad Patent Licensing Deal

Source: Stockstar

On October 5, Huawei and Qualcomm separately announced on their websites that they had reached a multi-year, wide-ranging patent licensing agreement.

The deal covers cross-licensing of patent portfolios across technologies including 5G, computing, artificial intelligence and networking; Qualcomm will also acquire a portion of Huawei's US patents in computing, AI, networking and other technology areas. The transaction is expected to close once necessary regulatory approvals are obtained.

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5. Zhipu Shares Surge as Goldman Sachs Upgrades to "Buy"

Source: 21st Century Business Herald

On October 5, Hong Kong-listed Zhipu (2513.HK), billed as the "world's first listed large-model company", extended gains, rising as much as nearly 7% before ending up 6.15% at HK$665 per share, for a market value of HK$324.2 billion. Since its listing in January this year, its shares have gained more than 450% in total.

On the news front, Zhipu's GLM-series models have recently won overseas recognition. AI coding tool Cursor announced the rollout of GLM-5.3 and GLM-5.3-Flash, saying GLM-5.3 scored the highest among open-weight models on its CursorBench 4.0 coding benchmark under Max reasoning settings, with an official score of 42.6%. Germany's sovereign AI firm Aleph Alpha also disclosed its use of GLM for its new Kolibri model.

In its latest research note, Goldman Sachs upgraded Zhipu to "Buy" from "Neutral" and revised its DCF-based 12-month target price to HK$1,560. Goldman said Zhipu has struck new commercial cooperation agreements with leading domestic and global cloud service providers, which could add high-margin revenue, and raised its year-end annualized recurring revenue forecast to $3.2 billion from $2.7 billion.

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6. China's Commodity Price Index Hits a Four-and-a-Half-Year High

Source: East Money

On October 5, the China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing released the China Bulk Commodity Price Index (CBPI) for September 2026 at 137.6 points, up 4.1% month on month and 22.9% year on year, the highest since March 2022. The index's performance showed that the bulk commodity market's prosperity improved further as the traditional production and construction season arrived, major projects accelerated, and manufacturing output and market demand continued to improve.

Driven by higher international crude oil prices, tighter supply of some products and rising production costs, the energy and chemical price indices climbed sharply, up 14.8% and 13.7% respectively month on month. Industry insiders noted that external imported risks remain relatively high and that faster increases in some industries' raw material prices have added pressure on downstream companies' operations; sustaining the market's positive momentum will still require closer monitoring of key bulk commodity markets.

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7. French Fiscal Worries Mount; Euro Falls to a 17-Month Low

Source: Sina Finance

Amid market concerns over France's fiscal position and political uncertainty, the euro fell sharply on October 5, at one point dropping to $1.1161 per euro, its lowest since May 2025. The euro had already fallen for four consecutive weeks.

France's government bond market has come under clear pressure recently. Data showed that last week the spread between the yield on 10-year French government bonds and comparable German bunds at one point exceeded 150 basis points, the first time since late 2011. As France's debt level and a political deadlock ahead of next year's presidential election fuel market anxiety, worries are growing that French fiscal risk could spread to other euro-area countries.

Meanwhile, safe-haven demand and high US Treasury yields lent support to the dollar, with the US dollar index rising as much as 0.47% to 102.37 on October 5. However, data released earlier by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that US nonfarm payrolls rose by 29,000 in September, below the average monthly gain of 45,000 over the previous 12 months; the weak jobs data lowered expectations of a near-term Federal Reserve rate hike, capping the dollar's advance.

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8. Oil Prices Spike Then Dive; Gold and Silver Rise

Source: 21st Century Business Herald

On October 5, international oil prices rose briefly before plunging. As of 16:50 Beijing time, Brent crude futures were down 0.62%, having earlier climbed more than 0.8% to above $103 a barrel, while New York crude fell more than 1% after an earlier gain of 0.17%.

In precious metals, gold and silver rose together. Spot gold gained 0.7% intraday to approach $4,170 an ounce, while spot silver rose more than 2% to $61.72 an ounce.

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9. Eurozone September Composite PMI Confirmed at 53.1

Source: Sina Finance

Data released by S&P Global on October 5 showed that the eurozone composite Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) for September 2026 was confirmed at 53.1, in line with the earlier flash reading and above August's 52.0, holding at a 41-month high.

Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said the eurozone's recovery is broadening from manufacturing into more areas. He said faster growth combined with rising inflation pressures will further reinforce market expectations that the European Central Bank will step up monetary tightening.

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10. Takaichi Voices Strong Protest to the United States

Source: Sina Finance

Before delivering her policy speech at the extraordinary Diet session on October 5, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said she was "deeply regretful" over a case in which US military personnel stationed in Japan are suspected of murder in Naha, Okinawa, and voiced a "strong protest" to the US side, demanding measures to prevent such incidents from recurring.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said earlier on October 5 that incidents and accidents involving US forces in Japan cause great unease for local residents and should never happen; despite various measures taken to date, such a cruel and vicious incident still occurred and a US service member was arrested, which Japan deeply regrets, and Japan will continue to demand that US forces in Japan tighten discipline and thoroughly prevent similar cases.

Kihara said Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi had separately lodged strong protests with the US side and demanded full cooperation with the investigation. US Ambassador to Japan George Glass was quoted as expressing deep regret and saying all necessary precautionary measures would be taken.

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