Asia-Pacific markets close mixed as oil gains and Iran war keeps investors on edge

Asia-Pacific markets closed mixed as auto and tech stocks rose after Nvidia announced robust revenue forecast for its key chips, and partnerships with carmakers from the region.

Memory maker Samsung Electronics,a decades-oldpartner of Nvidia gained 2.76%. Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s largest chipmakerand manufacturer of Nvidia’s advanced AI GPUs, rose 1.36%.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he expects purchase orders between Blackwell and Vera Rubin chips to reach $1 trillion through 2027 at Nvidia’sannual developer conference on Monday.

SK Hynix, however, reversed course to drop 0.41%.

Investors also assessed Iran war developments, with U.S. President Donald Trump looking to delay his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping by “a month or so” due to the Middle East conflict. Trump was expected to travel to China at the end of March.

International benchmark Brent crude gained 3.43% to $103.65 per barrel, while the U.S. West Texas Intermediate rose 3.85% to $97.08 per barrel as of 2:32 a.m. ET.

Australia’sS&P/ASX 200 added 0.36% to close at 8,614.3. Australia’s central bank on Tuesday raised benchmark policy rates for a second straight time to 4.1%. The 25 basis points hike was in line with expectations from analysts polled by Reuters, and comes as Australia’s inflation stays above the central bank’s upper limit of 3%.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 closed flat at 53,700.39, while the Topix jumped 0.45% to 3,627.07. South Korea’s Kospi rose 1.63% to end the trading day at 5,640.48, while the small-cap Kosdaq lost 0.12% to 1,136.94.

Hong Kong Hang Seng index rose 0.13% to 25,868.54, while mainland China’s CSI 300 lost 0.73% to 4,637.44.

Futures tied to theDow Jones Industrial Averagelost 46 points, or 0.1%.S&P 500 futuresslipped 0.1%, whileNasdaq 100 futuresdeclined nearly 0.2%.

Overnight in the U.S., stocks rose while oil prices pulled back as Wall Street tried to recover from another losing week, with investors monitoring the latest developments of the Iran war.

TheDow Jones Industrial Averageadded 387.94 points, or 0.83%, closing at 46,946.41. TheS&P 500rose 1.01% to end at 6,699.38, and theNasdaq Compositegained 1.22% and settled at 22,374.18.

Metashares gained more than 2% on a report — which the company has called “speculative” — that it isplanning to lay off more than 20%of its workforce. Additionally,Nvidiashares rose more than 1% as itsGTC conferencekicked off Monday.

—CNBC’s Lim Hui Jie, Sean Conlon and Pia Singh contributed to the report.