Stock market today: Asian shares trade mixed after Wall Street recovers

Asian shares were trading mixed Thursday, after Wall Street recovered some losses from the day before.

Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 momentarily reached a record high in early trading but slipped later to finish at 39,598.71, down 1.2%. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 rose nearly 0.4% to 7,763.70. South Korea's Kospi added 0.2% to 2,645.62. Hong Kong's Hang Seng shed 1.0% to 16,269.12, while the Shanghai Composite declined 0.3% to 3,031.72.

“The positive handover from Wall Street, alongside lower Treasury yields and a weaker U.S. dollar, may offer some relief as Fed Chair’s testimony failed to drive much hawkish deviation from his usual script,” said Yeap Jun Rong, market analyst at IG.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said again that cuts to interest rates may be coming this year, but that the Fed needs more data showing inflation is cooling before it will act.

The S&P 500 rose 26.11 points, or 0.5%, to 5,104.76. The benchmark index fell 1% a day prior.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 75.86 points, or 0.2%, to 38,661.05. The Nasdaq composite rose 91.95, or 0.6%, to 16,031.54.

Nvidia was the strongest force pushing upward on the S&P 500 as it rose 3.2%. Meta Platforms also steadied itself and rose 1.2% a day after sliding 1.6%. They’re among the market’s most influential stocks because of their massive size.

Big Tech stocks have been disproportionately responsible for the S&P 500’s run to records on expectations for strong continued growth. That has raised the bar of expectations for them to justify their high stock prices, leading to some painful drops earlier this week.

CrowdStrike jumped 10.8% after the cybersecurity company reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It also gave a