[MARKET UPDATE] Asia-Pac stocks trade mixed as the region partially shrugs off the negative handover from US peers

APAC Stocks: Mixed

• Asia-Pac stocks trade mixed as the region attempts to shrug off the broadly negative handover from Wall St, where risk sentiment was dampened amid a rebound in yields and after Walmart reported weak sales growth.

ASX 200: -0.3%

• Trades with mild losses amid another deluge of earnings and mostly softer flash PMI data from Australia.

Nikkei 225: -0.3%

• Retreated at the open but is off today's worst levels, with participants digesting the latest inflation data from Japan, which mostly matched estimates and remained below the 2% price target, but accelerated from the previous and could support the case for further BoJ rate hikes.

KOSPI +0.9%

• Clawed back early losses with price action driven by the tech heavyweights, with SK Hynix considering building a memory chip plant in Japan's Miyagi prefecture and with Samsung Electronics expected to announce a KRW 100tln shareholder return plan later today.

Hang Seng & Shanghai Comp: Hang Seng +0.8% / Shanghai Comp Flat

• Chinese markets are in the green, with the biggest movers in Hong Kong driven by recent earnings releases, while the mainland is rangebound despite China's Vice Finance Minister flagging incremental policies and the PBoC resuming 7-day reverse repo operations for the first time in more than a week.

US Equity Futures: Rangebound

• Price action is rangebound, which provides some reprieve following recent declines.

European Equity Futures Flat

• Indicate a quiet open with Euro Stoxx 50 futures flat after the cash market closed 0.4% lower on Thursday.

Session recaps of this kind, a mixed APAC tape partially shrugging off a soft US handover, follow a familiar sequence: the overnight driver is US yields and single-stock earnings rather than a macro shock, and regional divergence then reflects local catalysts rather than a common risk impulse. The pattern here is idiosyncratic offsets, Korean tech strength on corporate news against softer Australian and Japanese indices on flash PMIs and in-line inflation. Japanese CPI printing below target but accelerating from the prior month fits the established template in which the direction of travel, not the level, sustains the BoJ normalisation case; the tell is whether subsequent officials' commentary leans into that reading. On the China side, incremental policy flagging from the Vice Finance Minister alongside resumed 7-day reverse repo operations is the customary pairing of verbal easing signals with routine liquidity provision; mainland indices rangebound on that combination is the typical response absent concrete measures, with Hong Kong moving more freely on earnings. What follows in these sessions is usually whether European cash and the US open validate or fade the regional resilience, with the yield move that drove the original handover the variable to track.