SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Asian shares edged higher on Friday, after U.S. equities were buoyed by solid quarterly earnings and a rebound in technology stocks, while the euro languished near three-month lows after the European Central Bank kept interest rates unchanged.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.4 percent, while Japan’s Nikkei gained 0.4 percent.
South Korea’s KOSPI briefly rose more than 1 percent and set a one-month high, helped partly by hopes that a summit meeting between the leaders of North and South Korea would end their decades-long conflict and ease tensions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
After paring some of their gains, South Korean equities were up 0.7 percent, while the South Korean won rose 0.3 percent against the dollar in onshore trade.
“The easing of tension and the possibility of a peace treaty coming on the horizon are bullish for the won and KOSPI,” said Mingze Wu, FX trader of global payments for INTL FCStone Ltd in Singapore.
“However, it should be noted that prices did not have lasting weakness in the past during the periods of escalation, hence it’ll be difficult to imagine a new bullish trend emerging just from this,” Wu said.
The firmer tone of Asian equities came after each of Wall Street’s major indexes rose 1 percent or higher on Thursday, while Amazon.com Inc shares jumped more than 6 percent in after-market trading after the online retailer reported a 43 percent surge in first-quarter revenue.
The S&P 500 rose 1 percent, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite gained 1.6 percent.
Facebook surged 9.1 percent after posting an impressive earnings beat, which
