Asian markets opened higher on Tuesday, but the mood was not fully comfortable amid uncertainties around the geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.
Relief buying returned after the previous session’s oil slump.
The markets in Asia followed gains on Wall Street after US President Donald Trump announced on Monday that the US had held “productive talks” with Iran.
On Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 631 points while the S&P 500 rose 1.13% to close at 6,580.25.
The Nasdaq Composite gained 1.39% to 21,948.55.
Asian markets rally amid cautious optimism
Asia-Pacific equities started the day with real momentum, led by South Korea, where the Kospi jumped more than 3%.
Japan also advanced, with the Nikkei 225 up 1.1% and the Topix ahead 1.87%, as investors weighed softer domestic inflation against a still-fragile external backdrop.
Japan’s latest inflation data provided markets with another reason to believe policy pressure may be easing at the margin.
Japan’s headline CPI slowed to 1.3% in February from 1.5% in January, marking a fourth straight month of cooling and the lowest reading since March 2022.
Elsewhere, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.62%, mainland China’s CSI 300 added 0.52%, and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged up 0.32%.
The gains were broad enough to suggest that investors wanted to extend the relief rally, but restrained enough to show that nobody was ready to declare the worst of the geopolitical shock over.
Equity traders were buying the idea of de-escalation, but they were doing it with one eye fixed on the oil screen.
Oil prices swing sharply
The real story was still in energy.
Brent, which had surged above $112 a barrel on Friday, then collapsed nearly 11% on Monday to around $99, swung back more than 3.5% on Tuesday to roughly $103.70, while WTI jumped 4% to $91.72.
That kind of price action does not signal calm. It signals a market trying to price several incompatible outcomes at once.
US crude futures rose by more than $1 in early Asian trade as markets reassessed supply risks after Iran denied that talks with Washington had taken place.
The scale of the earlier sell-off showed how quickly traders were willing to strip out some of the war premium when Washington hinted at back-channel progress.
Diplomacy in question
That is why Donald Trump’s comments mattered so much.
In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump said the United States and Iran had held “very good and productive” conversations over the weekend on “a complete and total resolution” of hostilities.
He later told reporters the talks involved “a top person” in Iran and that both sides were eager to make a deal.
More importantly for markets, Trump said he had ordered a five-day postponement of planned US strikes on Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure.
That pause was read as a meaningful tactical signal, because it suggested Washington was at least willing to test diplomacy before expanding the conflict.
The post Kospi surges 3% as Asia rallies, oil swings keep investors cautious appeared first on Invezz