Asia markets are mostly higher following gains on Wall Street driven by Tesla, IBM and Meta Platforms after strong profit reports. U.S. futures and oil prices rose. Japan’s core inflation rate rose to 2.5%, paving the way for further interest rate hikes. The Kospi in South Korea fell as trading resumed on Friday after the holidays. Shares of SK Hynix, a major supplier to Nvidia Corp., plummeted by 9.9%. The S&P 500 climbed 0.5% Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.4%, and the Nasdaq composite added 0.3%. Microsoft kept indexes in check after reporting weaker growth than expected in its cloud-computing business.
