ASIA MIDDAY MOVES | Chip Rally Lifts Nikkei, KOSPI and Taiwan; Hong Kong Slips at Midday

According to Reuters, HKET and Korea Herald, Asian chip and tech shares led a broad regional advance at midday Monday, powered by a 3.38% jump in Wall Street's PHLX semiconductor index on Friday, though Hong Kong lagged and oil edged higher after fresh U.S.-Iran clashes in the Gulf. Tokyo's Nikkei 225 rebounded about 2.2%, standing at 66,209.45 as of 04:32 UTC, up 1,188.51 points, or 1.83%, recovering last week's decline. Tokyo Electron gained 4.35% and Advantest added 3.93%, while Sony eased 2.99%. Markets are pricing a 75% chance the Bank of Japan raises rates by a quarter point at its September 18 meeting. Seoul's KOSPI rallied roughly 3.1%, trading at 6,929.66 as of 04:32 UTC, up 242.45 points, or 3.63%, on tech strength. SK Hynix advanced 6.62% and Samsung Electronics rose 4.60%. Some traders cited Goldman Sachs's long-standing call for a further rise in the index toward 12,000. Hong Kong stocks bucked the regional trend, with the Hang Seng half-day at 25,402.73, down 0.97%, and the Hang Seng Tech Index off 1% at 4,524. Baidu fell more than 5% and Xiaomi slid about 4% ahead of a product launch, while newly promoted blue chip Hua Hong Semiconductor rose about 5%. Taiwan's TAIEX climbed to 47,263.95 as of 04:32 UTC, up 712.82 points, or 1.53%, having spiked as much as 878.45 points to an intraday 47,429.58. MediaTek touched its 10% limit-up at NT$4,855 on Nvidia AI ASIC demand, contributing over 200 index points, while UMC locked limit-up; Largan dropped below NT$7,000 after a European brokerage cut it to sell. In mainland China, the Shanghai Composite eased 0.24% to 3,920.70 by the midday break while the Shenzhen Component rose 1.38% to 13,703.21 and the ChiNext Index gained 2.63% to 3,373.12, as computing-hardware names led; CPO play Guanghe Technology rose more than 13%.