HONG KONG: Asian stocks mostly retreated Friday and South Korea's Kospi gave up gains after reaching an all-time high, as investors watch for developments from the Iran war and US President Donald Trump's summit in Beijing with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Tokyo's Nikkei 225 fell 1.2 per cent to 61,880.04 after rising earlier in the day.
South Korea's Kospi lost 3.2 per cent to 7,727.34 after crossing the 8,000 mark for the first time and reaching 8,046.78, in part powered by excitement around the artificial intelligence boom.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down 0.9 per cent to 26,145.66, while the Shanghai Composite index edged up 0.1 per cent to 4,183.05.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 dipped 0.1 per cent to 8,629.70.
Taiwan's Taiex traded 0.5 per cent lower, and India's Sensex was up 0.1 per cent.
Trump is wrapping up his China visit on Friday after a series of meetings with Xi that touched on issues including US-China trade, further economic cooperation and Taiwan. Investors are monitoring trade deal updates on areas such as American soybeans, beef and airplanes.
While there is optimism over US-China relations, some analysts are suggesting any deals should be looked at with a sense of caution. “Headline deals should be looked at with a healthy degree of scepticism,” wrote Leahy Fahy and Julian Evans-Pritchard, China economists at Capital Economics, in a Friday note.
A number of the promised projects and investments that came out of US-China deals from Trump's last China visit in 2017 did not end up materialising, they said, as tensions between Washington and Beijing elevated rapidly during the few years after that.
Trump also said in an interview that China could buy US oil, more than a year after China effectively stopped buying crude oil from the United States following Trump's imposition of hefty trade tariffs last year.
Oil prices climbed early Friday, as US-Iran talks on permanently ending the Iran war stalled, and after a ship anchored off the United Arab Emirates was seized and another cargo ship near Oman was attacked.
Brent crude, the international standard, was 1.3 per cent higher at USD 107.06 per barrel. It was trading at around USD 70 a barrel before the war in Iran started in late February.
Benchmark US crude was up 1.4 per cent to USD 102.56 per barrel.
Global energy flow has remained constrained with the Strait of Hormuz, crucial for global oil and gas transit, still largely closed and as the US imposed a sea blockade on Iranian ports since last month.
The White House said on Thursday after a bilateral meeting between Trump and Xi that both sides agreed the Strait of Hormuz must remain open.
On Thursday, Wall Street shares gained with the benchmark S&P 500 rising 0.8 per cent to 7,501.24 and hitting an all-time high for a second consecutive day.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up more than 0.7 per cent at 50,063.46, the first time it closed at above the 50,000 level since the Iran war. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite climbed 0.9 per cent to 26,635.22.
Shares of technology giant Cisco Systems jumped 13.4 per cent following better-than-reported results and after said it was cutting fewer than 4,000 jobs, while Nvidia rose 4.4 per cent as investors' hopes grew over updates on sales of its advanced H200 chips to Chinese firms as CEO Jensen Huang visited Beijing with Trump.
In other dealings, the US dollar rose to 158.50 Japanese yen from 158.37 yen. The euro was trading at USD 1.1651, down from USD 1.1669.