Seoul Gazette - Asia markets fluctuate as investors mull Trump-Xi talks

US President Donald Trump described his meeting in South Korea with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping -- their first since 2019, during Trump's first term -- as "amazing".

Xi said they had reached "consensus" on economic and trade issues, according to Beijing's state media.

Stock market reactions were subdued, with Japan's main benchmark closing flat following a widely expected central bank decision to hold interest rates steady.

Shanghai and Sydney closed with moderate drops, while Hong Kong was also down in the final hour of trading.

Seoul finished slightly up, helped partly by tech giant Samsung Electronics posting a 32 percent rise in on-year third quarter profits and strong automotive gains.

Taipei finished the day largely flat.

The meeting between Trump and Xi came after days of a tech-fuelled bull run in global markets, boosted further by an interest rate cut in the United States, confirmed on Wednesday by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

However, Powell's announcement also cast doubt on an additional cut in December, jolting US markets and lifting the value of the dollar.

The Nasdaq later recovered, finishing at a fourth straight record after another gain by artificial intelligence giant Nvidia, which became the first company to reach a $5 trillion market value.

Attention had been laser-focused on the meeting between Xi and Trump in the South Korean city of Busan.

Trump said the talks yielded an extendable one-year deal on China's supply of crucial rare earths, materials that are essential for sophisticated electronic components across a range of industries.

He said tariffs imposed over China's export of chemicals used to make the deadly drug fentanyl would be reduced to 10 percent -- bringing overall US tariffs on Chinese goods to 47 percent.

Trump also said China had agreed to purchase "tremendous" amounts of soybeans, as well as other farm products.

Xi urged teams from the two countries to "finalise follow-up work as soon as possible", calling for "tangible results to set minds at ease about the economies of China, the United States and the world", state news agency Xinhua said.

Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics said: "The reversal of some US tariffs on China won't have a big impact given that Chinese exporters had largely shrugged them off."

"But the de-escalation takes the immediate threat of large tariff hikes off the table, removing a key downside risk to the near-term outlook," he wrote in a note.

- Key figures at around 0720 GMT -

Tokyo - Nikkei 225: FLAT at 51,325.61 (close)

Hong Kong - Hang Seng Index: DOWN 0.7 percent at 26,158.62

Shanghai - Composite: DOWN 0.7 percent at 3,986.90 (close)

West Texas Intermediate: DOWN 0.7 percent at $60.07 per barrel

Brent North Sea Crude: DOWN 0.6 percent at $64.51 per barrel

Euro/dollar: UP at $1.1618 from $1.1595 on Wednesday

Pound/dollar: UP at $1.3199 from $1.3187

Dollar/yen: UP at 153.45 yen from 152.82 yen

Euro/pound: UP at 88.02 from 87.94 pence

New York - Dow: DOWN 0.2 percent at 47,632.00 (close)

London - FTSE 100: UP 0.6 percent at 9,756.14 (close)

K.Im--SG