Epic Asian Markets Update

Asian shares opened cautiously higher on Friday with Tokyo’s Nikkei steadying from its biggest one-day drop in two years as investors breathed a sigh of relief when Wall Street cut losses on an upbeat outlook from Hewlett-Packard.

The Nikkei is still up more than 60 percent since mid-November, when Shinzo Abe, who became prime minister the following month, proposed aggressive monetary and fiscal policies to revive the world’s third-largest economy.