Asia Market Wrap 9 October: Six of Eight Indices Rise as Hang Seng Gains 1.79 Percent
Six of the eight Asian indices that traded on our panel closed higher on Friday, with Seoul and Taipei shut for public holidays. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng led the gainers, up 1.79 percent, and Mumbai’s Nifty 50 added 1.30 percent as Tata Consultancy Services opened the Indian IT earnings season. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 slipped 0.02 percent in a third straight decline. With the rest of the Gulf’s weekend underway there is no Middle East wrap today, and the two United Arab Emirates markets, which trade on Friday, are published here: Dubai closed 0.33 percent higher on the exchange’s own daily figure and Abu Dhabi 0.06 percent lower. Brent traded 1.29 percent below Thursday’s settlement at 102.94 dollars a barrel by the 10:14 GMT reading.
Oil back under 103 dollars gives the region room to rise
Reuters’ markets report had world stocks edging up and oil slipping after US President Donald Trump said the United States would not attack Iran before next month’s midterm elections, easing some near-term concerns about energy supplies. The same report carried a broader caution: investors weighing another wave of fundraising by technology companies, with SpaceX, Broadcom and Oracle all expected to raise billions of dollars to buy advanced AI chips, while borrowing costs in some of the world’s biggest economies hovered near multi-year highs. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.5 percent and was still headed for a weekly decline near 0.7 percent, and the euro traded close to the 17-month low touched earlier this week, on course for a fifth consecutive weekly decline. Gold rose more than 1 percent, helped by a slightly softer dollar and lower oil prices. In Sydney, the Nvidia-backed data centre operator Firmus shelved its 5 billion dollar initial public offering, citing market volatility, and said it would pursue a private fundraising round instead; the S&P/ASX 200 still closed 0.64 percent higher.
Mumbai leads on earnings while Seoul and Taipei sit out
Tata Consultancy Services rose as much as 6.2 percent to an intraday high of 2,204 rupees after its operating margin stayed flat at 24 percent despite heavier artificial intelligence investment, and the Nifty IT index climbed as much as 3.1 percent, as Reuters reported it; the rise came after the Reserve Bank of India raised its policy repo rate by 25 basis points to 5.50 percent on Wednesday, its first increase in nearly four years. The Nifty 50’s close of 22,520.45, up 288.65 points, is the National Stock Exchange’s own closing figure, with 2,183 advancing stocks against 1,393 decliners across the exchange on its own count. Seoul’s market did not open, closed for Hangeul Proclamation Day on the Korea Exchange’s calendar, and Taipei took the adjusted holiday ahead of Saturday’s National Day on the Taiwan Stock Exchange’s schedule; both markets resume on Monday. In Tokyo, government data showed household spending fell 3.1 percent from a year earlier in August, a ninth straight monthly decline, and the Nikkei 225 edged 11.19 points lower while the broader Topix rose 0.33 percent. Shanghai and Shenzhen added 0.05 and 0.17 percent in their second session back from the National Day holiday, and Singapore’s Straits Times, down 0.20 percent, logged a third straight decline.
Top gainers
| Index | Close | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Hang Seng (Hong Kong) | 24,211.35 | +1.79% |
| Nifty 50 (India) | 22,520.45 | +1.30% |
| S&P/ASX 200 (Australia) | 8,716.60 | +0.64% |
| Topix (Japan) | 4,104.81 | +0.33% |
| Shenzhen Component (China) | 12,641.86 | +0.17% |
| Shanghai Composite (China) | 3,813.79 | +0.05% |
Closes of Friday 9 October 2026, ranked by change against Thursday’s closes as published; the Nifty row is the National Stock Exchange of India’s own closing figure. Run lengths are counted against our published closes.
Top losers
| Index | Close | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Nikkei 225 (Japan) | 69,030.92 | -0.02% |
| Straits Times (Singapore) | 5,401.89 | -0.20% |
Top losers, same session and basis; Seoul and Taipei did not trade, closed for Hangeul Proclamation Day and Taiwan’s National Day adjusted holiday on their exchanges’ own calendars.
United Arab Emirates
| Index | Close | Change |
|---|---|---|
| DFM General (Dubai) | 5,818.47 | +0.33% |
| FTSE ADX General (Abu Dhabi) | 9,795.67 | -0.06% |
The United Arab Emirates markets trade on Friday while the rest of the Gulf’s weekend has begun, so with no Middle East wrap today the two are published here. Figures are the exchanges’ own: the Dubai row is DFM’s published daily figure for 9 October, read at 11:09 GMT, and the Abu Dhabi row is the FTSE ADX General Index on the exchange’s own page with the market closed, read at 11:10 GMT.
Commodities and currencies
| Instrument | Level | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Gold, COMEX (Dec’26), dollars an ounce | $4,210.90 | +1.30% |
| Silver, COMEX (Dec’26), dollars an ounce | $60.66 | +2.08% |
| Brent Crude, ICE (Dec’26), dollars a barrel | $102.94 | -1.29% |
| WTI Crude, NYMEX (Nov’26), dollars a barrel | $90.58 | -0.99% |
| US Dollar Index (DXY) | 102.10 | -0.03% |
| Euro/Dollar | 1.1218 | +0.08% |
| Sterling/Dollar | 1.3237 | +0.10% |
| Dollar/Yen | 158.30 | +0.28% |
Intraday quotes at 10:14 GMT, in fixed order; snapshots, not settlements. The Brent and WTI changes are against Thursday’s settlements of 104.28 and 91.49 dollars, as published in our Commodities Wrap of 8 October 2026.
Why it matters: The holidays thinned the panel on the day the oil story turned, and the two absentees are the region’s chip heavyweights, so Friday’s recovery was measured without the semiconductor-heavy markets that led the selling. Cheaper crude eases the immediate arithmetic for the region’s oil importers, but the relief is partial: the Nikkei could not manage even a flat close while the broader Topix rose, and the bond-market caution behind the week’s selling has not lifted. Wall Street closed split overnight, and the question that travels with the clock is whether Europe treats a one-day retreat in crude as a turn or a pause. Of the ten indices we published on 9 October, the Hang Seng led at 1.79 percent higher and the Straits Times lagged at 0.20 percent lower.
Outlook: Our Europe wrap follows after the European closes, and our commodities wrap follows the settlement windows, where the day’s intraday declines in Brent and WTI meet their first settlements since the surge. Seoul and Taipei return to the panel on Monday, per the two exchanges’ calendars, while Tokyo sits out Monday’s session for Sports Day on the Japan Exchange Group’s calendar and returns on Tuesday.
How these wraps are prepared: Methodology.
Sources: CNBC, Dubai Financial Market, Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, NSE India, Korea Exchange, Taiwan Stock Exchange, Japan Exchange Group, Reserve Bank of India, Reuters, The Edge.
