Stock market today: Asian shares mostly rise, boosted by Wall Street records as Tesla zooms

TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares were mostly higher on Wednesday after Tesla shares zoomed up more than 10%, helping to drive U.S. benchmarks to new records.

Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 rose 0.9% in morning trading to 40,425.27. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained nearly 0.3% to 7,740.00. South Korea's Kospi edged up nearly 0.1% to 2,782.42. Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 0.9% to 17,924.43, while the Shanghai Composite lost 0.3% to 2,989.51.

Asian investors were cheered by hopes for an interest rate cut in the U.S. But some traders were keeping to the sidelines ahead of Thursday’s Independence Day holiday in the U.S.

“On the radar is the Japan’s Nikkei, which may extend its run above the 40,000 level, with overnight strength in tech while the Japanese yen continues to trade at a 38-year low,” said Yeap Jun Rong, market analyst at IG.

In currency trading, the U.S. dollar rose to 161.63 Japanese yen from 161.43 yen. The euro cost $1.0747, little changed from $1.0749. Among Tokyo technology-related shares, Kyocera Corp. jumped 2.2% in morning trading, while Murata Manufacturing Co. surged 5.2%.

On Wall Street, the S&P 500 added 0.6% to 5,509.01, topping its all-time high set two weeks ago. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.4% to 39,331.85, and the Nasdaq composite added 0.8% to 18,028.76, besting its own record set a day earlier.

Tesla led the way with a 10.2% jump after the electric-vehicle maker reported a milder drop in sales for the spring than analysts expected. Modest gains for other big, influential stocks also helped lift the market, including a 1.6% climb for Apple.

Stocks got a lift from easing Treasury yields after the head of the Federal Reserve made comments that investors took as a signal for possible cuts to interest rates later this year. Fed Chair Jerome Powell gave a nod to improvements in inflation data after some disappointingly high readings early in the year.

“We just want to understand that the levels that we’re seeing are a true reading of underlying inflation,” he said during a panel discussion at the European Central Bank’s monetary policy conference in Sintra, Portugal.

Investors hope inflation will slow enough to convince the Fed to lower its main interest rate, which has been sitting at its highest level in more than two decades and pressing the brakes on the economy.

Keeping Wall Street’s gains in check was Nvidia, which has been one of this year’s brightest stars. It fell 1.3%, though it’s still up nearly 147.7% for the year so far.

Eli Lilly fell 0.8%, and U.S.-listed shares of Novo Nordisk dropped 1.7% after President Biden criticized in an opinion piece for USA Today how much the companies are charging for their drugs for weight loss and diabetes.

The week’s most anticipated economic data will arrive on Friday, when the U.S. government reports the total jobs employers added in June. Before then, the U.S. stock market will have a shortened trading day on Wednesday and Thursday's Fourth of July holiday.

Treasury yields have been feeling some upward pressure recently because of politics. Last week’s debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump pushed traders to make moves in anticipation of a possible Republican sweep in November. That included sending Treasury yields higher, in part because of the possibility for policies that would further raise the U.S. government’s debt.

The 10-year yield is still well above its 4.29% level from late Thursday, before the debate.

In commodities markets, the price of benchmark U.S. oil ended up slipping modestly after touching its highest price since April. Crude prices have largely been rising on expectations for strong demand during the summer, as well as the possibility of hurricanes damaging oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricane Beryl is roaring through the Caribbean.

U.S. benchmark crude added 35 cents to $83.16 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international standard, gained 40 cents to $86.64 a barrel.

AP Writer Stan Choe contributed.

A currency trader walks by the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, July 3, 2024. Asian shares were mostly higher on Wednesday after Tesla gained more than 10%, helping to drive U.S. benchmarks to more records. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

A currency trader stands by the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, July 3, 2024. Asian shares were mostly higher on Wednesday after Tesla gained more than 10%, helping to drive U.S. benchmarks to more records. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

A currency trader watches computer monitors near the screens showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), right, and the foreign exchange rate at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, July 3, 2024. Asian shares were mostly higher on Wednesday after Tesla gained more than 10%, helping to drive U.S. benchmarks to more records. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

Currency traders work by the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, July 3, 2024. Asian shares were mostly higher on Wednesday after Tesla gained more than 10%, helping to drive U.S. benchmarks to more records. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

A currency trader walks by the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), right, and the foreign exchange rates at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, July 3, 2024. Asian shares were mostly higher on Wednesday after Tesla gained more than 10%, helping to drive U.S. benchmarks to more records. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

The Fearless Girl statues faces the New York Stock Exchange on July 2, 2024, in New York. Global stocks are mostly lower after benchmarks ended higher on Wall Street. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)

FILE - A man walking on Wall Street approaches the New York Stock Exchange, right, on June 26, 2024, in New York. Shares advanced in Europe on July 1, 2024, with the benchmark in Paris up 2.8% briefly after the far-right National Rally gained a strong lead in first-round legislative elections. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

Currency traders work near the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A currency trader passes by the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Currency traders watch monitors near the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

LONDON (AP) — British voters are picking a new government Thursday in a parliamentary election that is widely expected to bring the Labour Party to power against a gloomy backdrop of economic malaise, mounting distrust in institutions and a fraying social fabric.

A jaded electorate is delivering its verdict on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservative Party, which has been in power since 2010. Polls opened at 7 a.m.

Sunak made the short journey from his home to vote at Kirby Sigston Village Hall in his Richmond constituency. He arrived with his wife, Akshata Murty, and walked hand-in-hand into the village hall, which is surrounded by rolling fields.

The center-left Labour Party led by Keir Starmer has had a steady and significant lead in opinion polls for months, but its leaders have warned against taking the election result for granted, worried their supporters will stay home.

"Change. Today, you can vote for it,” he wrote Thursday on the X social media platform.

The Conservatives have acknowledged that Labour appears headed for victory and urged voters not to hand the party a “supermajority.”

In the final days of campaigning Sunak insisted “the outcome of this election is not a foregone conclusion.”

But in a message to voters on Wednesday, Sunak said that “if the polls are to be believed, the country could wake up tomorrow to a Labour supermajority ready to wield their unchecked power.” He urged voters to back the Conservatives to limit Labour's power.

Labour has not set pulses racing with its pledges to get the sluggish economy growing, invest in infrastructure and make Britain a “clean energy superpower.”

But nothing has really gone wrong in its campaign, either. The party has won the support of large chunks of the business community and endorsements from traditionally conservative newspapers, including the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sun tabloid.

The Sun said in an editorial that "by dragging his party back to the center ground of British politics for the first time since Tony Blair was in No. 10 (Downing St.), Sir Keir has won the right to take charge,” using the formal title for Starmer, who was knighted.

Former Labour candidate Douglas Beattie, author of the book “How Labour Wins (and Why it Loses),” said Starmer's “quiet stability probably chimes with the mood of the country right now.”

The Conservatives, meanwhile, have been plagued by gaffes. The campaign got off to an inauspicious start when rain drenched Sunak as he made the announcement outside 10 Downing St. Then, Sunak went home early from commemorations in France marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.

Several Conservatives close to Sunak are being investigated over suspicions they used inside information to place bets on the date of the election before it was announced.

It has all made it harder for Sunak to shake off the taint of political chaos and mismanagement that’s gathered around the Conservatives since then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his staff held lockdown-breaching parties during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Johnson’s successor, Liz Truss, rocked the economy with a package of drastic tax cuts and lasted just 49 days in office. There is widespread dissatisfaction over a host of issues, from a creaking public health care system to crumbling infrastructure.

But for many voters, the lack of trust applies not just to Conservatives, but to politicians in general. Veteran rouser of the right, Nigel Farage, has leaped into that breach and grabbed attention with his anti-immigration rhetoric.

The centrist Liberal Democrats and environmentalist Green Party also want to sweep up disaffected voters.

“I don’t know who’s for me as a working person,” said Michelle Bird, a port worker in Southampton on England’s south coast who was undecided about whether to vote Labour or Conservative. “I don’t know whether it’s the devil you know or the devil you don’t.”

Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, center, arrives with First Minister of Wales Vaughan Gething, right, and and local parliamentary candidate for Carmarthenshire, Martha O'Neil, left, for a visit to the West Regwm Farm Events Venue in Whitland, Carmarthenshire, while on the General Election campaign trail, in Wales, Wednesday July 3, 2024. (Stefan Rousseau/PA via AP)

Britain's Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer, center, reacts after giving a speech during a visit to the Caledonian Gladiators Stadium in East Kilbride, Scotland, Wednesday July 3, 2024, while on the General Election campaign trail. (Andrew Milligan/PA via AP)

A woman takes out stickers to prepare a polling station early morning in London, Thursday, July 4, 2024. Voters in the U.K. are casting their ballots in a national election to choose the 650 lawmakers who will sit in Parliament for the next five years. Outgoing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak surprised his own party on May 22 when he called the election, which could have taken place as late as January 2025. Polls opened at 7 a.m. and will close at 10 p.m. on Thursday night. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

A woman walks past a polling station just before voting starts in a general election, in London, Thursday, July 4, 2024. Britain goes to the polls Thursday after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a general election. (AP Photo/David Cliff)

Voters arrive at a polling station in London, Thursday, July 4, 2024. Voters in the U.K. are casting their ballots in a national election to choose the 650 lawmakers who will sit in Parliament for the next five years. Outgoing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak surprised his own party on May 22 when he called the election, which could have taken place as late as January 2025. Polls opened at 7 a.m. and will close at 10 p.m. on Thursday night. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty leave a polling station after voting near Richmond, North Yorkshire, England, Thursday, July 4, 2024. Britain goes to the polls Thursday after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a general election. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell )

Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty walk to a polling station to vote near Richmond, North Yorkshire, England, Thursday, July 4, 2024. Britain goes to the polls Thursday after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a general election. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell )

Britain's Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer speaks during a visit to the Caledonian Gladiators Stadium in East Kilbride, Scotland, Wednesday July 3, 2024, while on the General Election campaign trail. (Andrew Milligan/PA via AP)

Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty walk from a polling station after voting near Richmond, North Yorkshire, England, Thursday, July 4, 2024. Britain goes to the polls Thursday after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a general election. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell )

People react to Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform UK party, speaking during an electoral rally at Clacton Pier in Clacton-on-Sea, England, Wednesday, July 3, 2024. United Kingdom voters will cast ballots in a national election Thursday, passing judgment on Sunak's 20 months in office, and on the four Conservative prime ministers before him. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, center, leaves after addressing supporters during his visit to the West Regwm Farm Events Venue in Whitland, Carmarthenshire, while on the General Election campaign trail, in Wales, Wednesday July 3, 2024. (Stefan Rousseau/PA via AP)

Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak looks on as journalists ask him questions, during a visit to Braishfield primary school as part of a Conservative general election campaign event in Hampshire, England, Wednesday July 3, 2024. (Claudia Greco/Pool Photo via AP)