Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.3% to 8,300.90, while South Korea’s Kospi slipped 0.2% to 2,650.17. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 2.7% to 23,183.02, boosted by a surge in shares of Alibaba, which reported robust financial results.

Microsoft was the strongest force pushing the S&P 500 upward. It rose 1.3% after saying it had developed what it calls the world’s first “quantum processing unit,” which cou

The S&P 500 flirts with a record as U.S. stock-market investors return from a three-day weekend, awaiting minutes from the Federal Reserve's January meeting and data due later this week.