On Thursday, Asian equity markets opened higher in line with their American peers. Japan’s Nikkei was up more than 1.90 percent, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down further with a marginal gain of 0.06 percent.
The easing of the index came as the United States-Israel-Iran war continued to engulf the vast West Asian region.
The biggest upheaval occurred in the market of South Korea, whose Kospi rose by about 12 percent, then came down to 10 percent. Small-cap Kosdaq jumped more than 11 percent.
The meteoric rise was short-lived when the Korea Exchange halted trading on the benchmark.
Since the war began late last week, the Kospi has been one of the worst performing indexes among major global equity markets. In its worst trading day ever, the Kospi fell 12 percent on Wednesday.
A double-digit surge on Thursday helped it recover most of the losses incurred during the week.
Earlier, the US equity market posted modest gains on March 4 after several days of heavy selling due to the Iran war. The mild recovery came after reports that Iran has held backchannel talks with the US.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Besant also said on Wednesday that Washington would announce measures to stabilize oil shipments through the Persian Gulf. This was another development towards reducing tensions on the oil front.
The S&P 500 closed 0.78 percent higher on Wednesday, while the Dow Jones was up about 0.50 percent. The tech-dominated Nasdaq rose 1.29 percent. The American Volatility Index was also down 10.27 percent.
The effect of the rise in US and Asian markets is visible on the Indian stock market on Thursday, which had fallen by about 2 percent on Wednesday.
In early trading hours, the 30-share Sensex rose over 500 points. Nifty 50 went above the 24,600 mark. Both the benchmark indices were up more than 0.60 per cent.
Indian energy companies traded in the green on Thursday. Petronet, which was the worst performer on Wednesday, was trading more than 1.5 per cent higher at Rs 284.
Reliance Industries, another oil major, opened at Rs 1,349.30 on the stock market on Thursday and touched Rs 1,384.35, up 2.86 per cent, in early trade.
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