Asia Market Wrap 1 September: Taiex jumps 1.78 percent on the Nvidia MediaTek deal as 6 of 8 headline benchmarks fall

By The Edge Research Team

Taiwan’s Taiex rose 1.78 percent to close at 46,948.72, its highest finish since 1 July and the day’s high, as investors chased semiconductor shares after Nvidia agreed to invest 3.5 billion dollars in MediaTek’s 3.9 billion dollar overseas convertible bond offering, announced on Monday, dealers told Taiwan’s Central News Agency. MediaTek said the offering, the largest ever by a Taiwanese company, also drew participation from Alphabet and international institutional investors, without disclosing the size of their allocations. The gain came 1 session after the Taiex had been the region’s weakest board, a swing of 2.22 percentage points, on our calculation. Behind it the region was broadly lower: 6 of the 8 headline market benchmarks fell, and the spread between the strongest and weakest of the 10 gauges on this board widened to 2.80 percentage points from 1.41 on Monday, close to double, on our calculation.

The average change across those 8 headline benchmarks was minus 0.03 percent, which is as close to unchanged as a regional session gets. That average is doing a great deal of concealing. Strip Taiwan out and the remaining 7 average minus 0.28 percent, so a single market accounted for the difference between a mildly negative session and a flat one.

A Single Deal, and a Concentrated Index Move

MediaTek closed limit up at 10 percent, at 4,315.00 Taiwan dollars, and contributed about 190 points to the Taiex, while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company rose 1.46 percent to 2,440.00 Taiwan dollars and contributed about 280 points, per the Central News Agency. Those 2 stocks together account for roughly 470 of the index’s 820.25 point gain, or about 57 percent of the move, on our calculation. Foreign institutional investors bought a net 26.71 billion Taiwan dollars on the main board, according to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

The distinction matters for how far the move reads across. The company at the centre of the financing supplied about 190 points, roughly 23 percent of the index’s gain, on our calculation. The larger single contribution came from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which was not a party to the transaction. An index gain this concentrated in 2 names is a narrower event than the headline percentage suggests.

Japan’s Benchmarks Close on Opposite Sides of Flat

The Nikkei 225 fell 0.15 percent to 66,215.34 while the broader Topix rose 0.62 percent to 4,181.86, a gap of 0.76 percentage points with opposite signs, on our calculation. The 2 indices also diverged on Monday, by 0.37 percentage points, so the split roughly doubled in a session. The divergence partly reflects what the 2 indices are built to measure: the Nikkei is price weighted and more sensitive to a small number of high priced constituents, while the Topix is capitalisation weighted across a much broader universe.

The session also carried a bond market event. Japan’s benchmark 10 year government bond yield rose to 3 percent for the first time in 30 years, according to Reuters.

Japanese company data released during the session showed investment picking up modestly from a standstill. Capital investment including software rose 1.6 percent year on year in the April to June quarter, after January to March came in unchanged at 0.0 percent and October to December 2025 rose 6.5 percent, per the Ministry of Finance. Manufacturing investment nevertheless fell 3.7 percent, while non-manufacturing rose 4.7 percent. Sales rose 5.9 percent and ordinary profits 24.6 percent over the same period.

Mainland China and Hong Kong Turn Lower as the Factory Survey Improves

The Shanghai Composite, Hang Seng and Shenzhen Component all fell, within a range of 0.86 percentage points: Shanghai eased 0.16 percent, the Hang Seng fell 0.93 percent and Shenzhen fell 1.02 percent, the weakest row on the board. On Monday the same 3 gauges had finished with 2 gains and 1 small decline, so the group moved from mixed to uniformly negative.

That happened on a day when the factory survey improved. The RatingDog China General Manufacturing PMI, compiled by S&P Global, rose to 51.5 in August from 50.9 in July, a 2 month high and a ninth consecutive month above the 50 point line separating expansion from contraction, with the fastest growth in new export orders in 6 months. The survey was collected between 12 and 20 August. Elsewhere in the region the Japan manufacturing PMI rose to 54.9 from 54.5 and South Korea’s eased to 52.3 from 53.1.

South Korea’s trade data was the region’s largest release by magnitude of change. August exports rose 68.7 percent year on year to 98.25 billion dollars, a third consecutive month above 90 billion dollars, with a trade surplus of 34.75 billion dollars, per the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources. Semiconductor exports rose 209.0 percent to a record 46.65 billion dollars, which is 47.5 percent of all Korean exports in the month, on our calculation. The Kospi added 0.23 percent.

Crude Extends Its Gains for a Second Session

West Texas Intermediate traded at 87.84 dollars a barrel, up 2.43 percent, and Brent at 92.14 dollars, up 1.82 percent, both against Monday’s settlements. It was a second consecutive session of gains after Monday’s rises of 3.74 and 3.61 percent.

Two very large crude carriers loaded with Saudi oil were struck by unknown projectiles within minutes of each other while transiting outbound through the Strait of Hormuz late on Monday, according to Reuters, citing the shipping intelligence firms Marisks and Kpler. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency separately reported a tanker struck by 3 unknown projectiles about 17 nautical miles east of Khasab, Oman, while completing an outbound transit, with no casualties and no environmental impact. Mediation efforts by Qatar and Oman aimed at restoring normal traffic through the strait have so far been inconclusive, according to Reuters, which notes the route carried about a fifth of global oil supplies before the disruption began in late February.

Precious metals moved the other way. Gold eased 1.21 percent to 4,427.30 dollars an ounce and silver fell 2.16 percent to 65.545 dollars, the weakest of the commodity rows below.

Closing index levels for the 1 September 2026 session, captured at 10:23 GMT after every Asian market had closed, ranked by change. The Nifty 50 and the S&P/ASX 200 both round to minus 0.10 percent and are ranked on their unrounded values. The Taiex close is the Taiwan Stock Exchange’s own published figure and the S&P/ASX 200 is that of the Australian Securities Exchange and S&P Dow Jones Indices. The 8 headline market benchmarks referred to above are the Nikkei 225, Shanghai Composite, Hang Seng, Kospi, Nifty 50, S&P/ASX 200, Taiex and Straits Times; the Topix and the Shenzhen Component are additional gauges for markets already counted.

Quotes captured at 10:57 GMT on 1 September 2026, taken before the day’s settlement windows. These are intraday levels, not exchange settlements, and each change is measured against the previous session’s settlement, so it is settlement to snapshot rather than settlement to settlement. Silver is quoted on the December contract, which carried 87,781 lots of open interest against 2,627 in October at the 31 August settlement, per CME Group; September silver entered its delivery period on 31 August, and vendors roll to a new front month on different dates, so quotes for the same day can sit on different contracts and both be correct.

Intraday quotes from the same 10:57 GMT capture on 1 September 2026, measured against each instrument’s previous close. A rise in dollar/yen is a weaker yen.

Elsewhere, Most Recent Completed Sessions

Middle Eastern markets trade Sunday to Thursday and Tuesday’s regional set was incomplete at this capture, with the Saudi, Emirati and Egyptian exchanges still trading. Continental European exchanges had been open for several hours but had not completed Tuesday’s session, and United States markets had not yet opened. All 3 tables below therefore carry Monday 31 August, the most recently completed session in each region.

Middle East, 31 August close, for reference

Carried verbatim from our Middle East Market Wrap covering the 31 August 2026 session. Jordan is carried in this table alongside the Gulf markets and Egypt.

Europe, 31 August close, for reference

Carried verbatim from our Europe Market Wrap covering the 31 August 2026 session. The FTSE 100 is absent because the London Stock Exchange was closed for the Summer Bank Holiday and held no session.

United States, 31 August close, for reference

Carried verbatim from our US Market Wrap covering the 31 August 2026 session.

Why It Matters

A regional average of minus 0.03 percent describes almost nothing about this session. Underneath it, one market rose 1.78 percent with about 57 percent of the gain supplied by 2 stocks, Japan’s 2 main benchmarks closed on opposite sides of flat, and the mainland Chinese and Hong Kong gauges fell together on a day the mainland factory survey reached a 2 month high. Our reading of that pattern is that these markets were pricing company specific and index specific news rather than a single regional factor.

Crude is the exception, and the one input common to every economy on this board. A second consecutive session of gains, alongside reported strikes on tankers during outbound transit through the Strait of Hormuz, raises energy cost pressure across the region’s major importing economies. South Korea’s own trade release shows how that price shock is already appearing in nominal trade values: petroleum product exports rose 65.3 percent in value to 6.84 billion dollars and petrochemical exports rose 12.2 percent to 3.86 billion dollars on higher unit prices the ministry links to the instability, even as their export volumes fell 2.2 percent and 7.0 percent respectively. That combination points to a price effect rather than stronger underlying volume demand, and it illustrates how an energy shock can lift nominal trade values while physical shipments contract.

Outlook

The near term test is whether the Taiex move broadens beyond the semiconductor complex or fades as a single deal repricing, and whether foreign buying of the size reported on Tuesday persists. In Japan, a 10 year government bond yield at 3 percent for the first time in 30 years sits alongside corporate investment that has only modestly reaccelerated from a flat first quarter, with manufacturing investment itself contracting 3.7 percent year on year, and the interaction of those 2 is more consequential for Japanese equities than either index’s daily percentage. For the region as a whole, the question is whether crude holds its gains, since that is the one input currently common to all of these markets.

Sources: Central News Agency, Taiwan, Taiex close, the MediaTek and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company contributions, and the Nvidia and Alphabet participation in MediaTek’s convertible bond offering, 1 September 2026; Taiwan Stock Exchange, closing index and foreign institutional flows; Australian Securities Exchange and S&P Dow Jones Indices, S&P/ASX 200 close; S&P Global, RatingDog China General Manufacturing PMI and the Japan and South Korea manufacturing PMIs, 1 September 2026; Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources, Republic of Korea, August trade statistics, 1 September 2026; Ministry of Finance, Japan, Financial Statements Statistics of Corporations by Industry for April to June 2026, 1 September 2026; United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, Strait of Hormuz tanker advisory; CME Group, silver futures settlements and open interest for 31 August 2026; Reuters, the two tanker strikes in the Strait of Hormuz citing Marisks and Kpler, the Japanese 10 year government bond yield, and the mediation efforts on the strait, 1 September 2026; CNBC, index, commodity and currency quotes; The Edge, Middle East, Europe and US Market Wraps covering the 31 August 2026 session and the Asia Market Wrap covering 31 August 2026.

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