MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Asian shares were mostly lower Friday after U.S. stocks fell back following President Donald Trump’s meeting with China’s leader, Xi Jinping.
Despite the two leaders' agreement to extend a truce in the trade war between the two largest economies, Chinese markets declined on concerns over persisting tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index shed 1.1% to 26,001.60 and the Shanghai Composite index slipped
0.8% to 3,954.79.
Data released Friday showed factory activity in China contracted in October for a seventh straight month and at the fastest pace in six months. The official NBS Manufacturing PMI fell to 49.0 from 49.8 in September.
Japan's Nikkei 225 index was the outlier among major Asian markets, gaining 2.1% to 52,411.34, yet another record, after a report showed industrial production rose 2.2% month-on-month in September, beating market expectations and rebounding from a 1.5% drop the month before.
South Korea's Kospi rose 0.5% to 4,107.50, while Australia's S&P/ASX 200 lost earlier gains, shedding less than 0.1% to 8,881.90.
Taiwan's Taiex fell 0.2% while India's BSE Sensex slipped 0.3%. Indexes in Singapore, Jakarta and Manila were also down.
On Thursday, the S&P 500 fell 1% to 6,822.34, dropping further from its all-time high set on Tuesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.2% to 47,522.12. The Nasdaq composite dropped 1.6% from its record set the day before, closing at 23,581.14.
Trump rated his meeting with Xi as a “12” on a scale of zero to 10, saying he would cut tariffs. But stocks had already run to records on expectations for potentially bigger improvements in trade friction between Beijing and Washington.
Earnings of Big Tech companies also were feeling the pressure of high hopes. Meta Platforms dropped 11.3%, cutting into what had been a 28.4% jump for the year so far. It was the heaviest weight on the S&P 500. Analysts said investors were likely perturbed by how much Facebook’s parent company said it’s planning to spend in 2026. Companies across the industry have been on an investment spree to build out their artificial-intelligence capabilities, and the concern is whether it will all pay off.
“There are moments in market history when capital stops behaving like money and starts acting like obsession — when spending becomes the strategy, not the consequence. That’s exactly where we are now with artificial intelligence,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.
Microsoft sank 2.9% even though it reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Analysts pointed to how it also expects to spend more on investments in 2026 than in 2025, while growth for its Azure business may have fallen a bit short of some investors’ expectations.
On the winning side of Big Tech was Alphabet. Shares of Google’s parent company climbed 2.5% after its profit and revenue for the latest quarter easily topped analysts’ expectations.
How such companies do matters incredibly for investors. The trio of Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft alone account for 14.5% of the total value of all the companies in the S&P 500 index, which dictates the movements for many 401(k) accounts. That means movements for them and a handful of other Big Tech companies can easily overshadow what hundreds of other stocks are doing.
In other dealings early Friday, benchmark U.S. crude oil shed 26 cents to $60.31 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, lost 27 cents to $64.10.
The U.S. dollar rose to 154.22 Japanese yen from 154.14 yen. The euro fell to $1.1560 from $1.1566.
