Asian shares advance, tracking Wall Street tech rally

TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares were higher on Tuesday, recovering from some early losses as regional markets tracked a late rally on Wall Street led by technology shares.

Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 added 0.5% to finish at 22,549.05. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index jumped nearly 1.0% to 24,748.97 and South Korea's Kospi climbed 0.6% to 2,138.84. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 inched up 0.2% to 5,954.40, while the Shanghai Composite gained 0.2 to 2,970.92.

Shares rose in Singapore and Taiwan but fell in Jakarta.

“It’s back to the regular order of business, which is trying to figure out why stocks are so high!" Stephen Innes of AxiCorp said in a commentary. “You can add the resurgence of COVID-19 to the laundry list of things the market doesn’t care about, so it seems.”

On Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose 0.6% to 3,117.86 after initially sliding 0.6% following weakness in overseas markets as the global tally of coronavirus infections surpassed 9 million. Investors are weighing the risks that rising coronavirus cases could pose to hopes for an economic recovery. That's led traders to bid up stocks in technology companies that offer services online, a thriving conduit of commerce through the outbreak.

“In an environment where the WHO had only recently announced on Sunday a record increase in global Covid-19 cases, sentiment can certainly still turn very promptly with the flick of the switch," Jingyi Pan, a market strategist with IG in Singapore said in a report.

Overnight, the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that the coronavirus pandemic “is still accelerating” around the globe. He noted that the most recent 1 million cases of the virus were reported in just the last eight days.

Asian markets initially opened lower,...