Sawt Falasteen - Asia stocks muted with all eyes on Trump-Xi meeting

Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met for the first time since 2019 in Busan, South Korea, engaging in high-stakes talks about the relationship between the world's top two economies.

The meeting comes after days of a tech-fuelled bull run in global markets, boosted further by an interest rate cut in the United States, confirmed Wednesday by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

But Powell's announcement also cast doubt on an additional cut in December, jolting US markets and lifting the value of the dollar.

The Nasdaq later recovered, finishing at a fourth straight record after another gain by artificial intelligence giant Nvidia, which became the first company to reach a $5 trillion market value.

A "cautious reaction" is expected in Asia, wrote Lorraine Tan, director of equity research for the region at Morningstar, in a note.

"The decline in US rates provides more flexibility to the Asian central banks to lower if they want to as there may be some pressure on the USD," she said.

Main benchmarks were nearly flat during Thursday morning trading in Tokyo, Shanghai and Sydney.

Hong Kong -- back from Wednesday's public holiday -- and Taipei tracked moderate gains.

Stocks in Seoul surged by more than one percent, helped partly by tech giant Samsung Electronics posting a 32 percent rise in profits on-year for the third quarter and strong automotive gains.

Attention is now laser-focused on talks between Trump and Xi, which began with a handshake and friendly greetings before closed-door discussions between the two sides' delegations.

Before the talks kicked off in earnest, Xi said the the two countries "should be partners and friends", while Trump said they would have a "fantastic relationship for a long time".

Markets have been boosted by comments this week by Trump expressing confidence that a sweeping deal can be struck with Beijing.

Among the key issues that could be discussed are the supply of rare earth minerals -- a strategic sector currently dominated by China -- competition over artificial intelligence and computer chips and geopolitical hotspots, including Ukraine and Taiwan.

- Key figures at around 0230 GMT -

Tokyo - Nikkei 225: UP 0.1 percent at 51,368.71

Hong Kong - Hang Seng Index: UP 0.5 percent at 26,475.53

Shanghai - Composite: DOWN 0.2 percent at 4,009.86

West Texas Intermediate: DOWN 0.6 percent at $60.09 per barrel

Brent North Sea Crude: DOWN 0.6 percent at $64.53 per barrel

Euro/dollar: UP at $1.1615 from $1.1595 on Wednesday

Pound/dollar: UP at $1.3205 from $1.3187

Dollar/yen: DOWN at 152.49 yen from 152.82 yen

Euro/pound: UP at 87.96 from 87.94 pence

New York - Dow: DOWN 0.2 percent at 47,632.00 (close)

London - FTSE 100: UP 0.6 percent at 9,756.14 (close)

R.AbuNasser--SF-PST