Asia-Pacific markets mixed after Fed Chair Powell’s rate cut comments lift Wall Street

Asia-Pacific markets were mixed on Tuesday as investors assessed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s dovish comments on rate cuts that sent Wall Street higher overnight.

Powell said the central bank will not wait until inflation hits 2% to cut interest rates, as the Fed’s policy works with “long and variable lags.”  So, “if you wait until inflation gets all the way down to 2%, you’ve probably waited too long,” he said.

His comments combined with expectations that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s failed assassination attempt will lead to big gains for the party and friendlier fiscal policies pushed the Dow Jones Industrial Average to close at fresh highs.

Mainland China’s CSI 300 climbed 0.63%% to close the day at 3,498.28.

Led by consumer stocks, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was down 1.52% in its final hour of trade.

Insurance company Ping An was one of the top losers on Hang Seng, with shares sinking more than 5% as the firm announced that it will cancel $102.6 million A shares in its repurchased securities account. Separately, Chinese insurers proposed to issue $3.5 billion of convertible bonds due in 2029.

India’s benchmark Nifty 50 hit an all-time high, gaining 0.20%. The country is set to present its union budget for financial year 2025 next week.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 gained 0.2% to 41,275.08 and the Topix rose 0.34%, ending at 2,904.5 as markets resumed trading after a public holiday.

Shares of Japan’s TDK Corporation, the sixth largest stock on the Nikkei by weight, jumped more than 5.4%.

South Korea’s Kospi climbed 0.18% and finished at 2,866.09, while the Kosdaq swung the opposite direction and fell 1.56% to 839.61.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.23%, retreating from the index’s all-time closing high on Monday and finishing at 7,999.3

Following Monday’s weaker-than-expected China GDP print, Goldman Sachs lowered its forecast for China’s full-year gross domestic product to 4.9% from 5%, while JPMorgan cut its predictions from 5.2% to 4.7%.

“This highlights the need for the government to step up policy support in the second half if they want to ensure around 5% growth for the full year,” Hui Shan, chief China economist at Goldman Sachs told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Tuesday, elaborating that weak domestic demand remains a big issue.

Investors continue to look for developments from China’s Third Plenum, where high local government debt levels and a push for advanced manufacturing will be on the agenda.

“This is a potential window for the leadership to give us more clues about what they think about the policy trajectory forward,” she said.

Elsewhere, Singapore state investor Temasek announced plans to invest up to $10 billion in India over three years in the country’s financial services and healthcare industries. As of March, the company had 7% of investments in the South Asian nation.

Temasek, which has 19% of its investments in China, said it continues to take a cautious stance due to trade tensions.

Overnight in the U.S., the blue-chip Dow advanced 0.53% to close at a record 40,211.72. The S&P 500 added 0.28% to finish at 5,631.22, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.4% to end at 18,472.57.

—CNBC’s Alex Harring and Yun Li contributed to this report.