(Updates with closing levels)

By Junko Fujita and Rocky Swift

TOKYO, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Japan's Nikkei share gauge

powered to an all-time high on Tuesday, driven by sharp

gains for tech companies and renewed optimism over trade with

the United States.

With financial markets reopening after a holiday in Japan on

Monday, the stock benchmark caught up with peaks scaled earlier

this year by other major global centres.

The Nikkei 225 surged 2.2% to 42,718.172 at the bell, the

highest close ever. It touched 42,999.71 earlier in the session,

exceeding the previous intraday high of 42,426.77 set on July

11, 2024.

In a roller-coaster ride in 2024, the Nikkei exceeded a

record that had stood since 1989 during Japan's bubble economy.

Tokyo's broader Topix gauge has been setting

successive record highs since July 24 and also scored a new

all-time high on Tuesday, rising 1.4% to close at 3,066.37.

The U.S. Standard & Poor's 500 and MSCI's broadest

gauge of global equities have been charting new

peaks since June.

"The Nikkei was not able to hit a record until today because

chip-related shares and auto shares dragged on the index," said

Takamasa Ikeda, senior portfolio manager at GCI Asset

Management.

"The Nikkei could soon peak as technology shares that led

Wall Street's rally have slowed down."

SoftBank Group soared 6.9% to 14,825 yen, a historic high.

The stock has catapulted more than 25% in the past five days and

got an added boost after Reuters reported that SoftBank was

selecting banks for a U.S. listing of its payments app operator

PayPay.

Semiconductor industry heavyweights Advantest ( ADTTF ) and

Lasertec ( LSRCF ) jumped 6.3% and 7.1%, respectively.

Global stock markets tumbled after U.S. President Donald

Trump's April 2 "Liberation Day" announcement of sweeping

tariffs on imports from dozens of countries into the U.S. Shares

have since more than recouped those losses as trade concerns

abated and excitement over artificial intelligence (AI)

companies soared.

Uncertainty over tariff levels imposed by the U.S. has

weighed on shares in Japan, where exports are a key driver for

the economy. The U.S. on Thursday promised to amend a

presidential executive order to remove overlapping tariffs on

Japanese goods.

"The impact of U.S. tariffs seems not as serious as the

market had expected," said Shoichi Arisawa, general manager of

the investment research department at IwaiCosmo Securities.

"There will be more companies which will revise up their

outlooks due to the limited impact of the U.S. tariffs. The yen

remains weak, which is also positive for Japanese companies."

Foreign money has been flooding into the Japanese market of

late, but data from the Tokyo Stock Exchange last week indicated

those flows may have peaked.

Overseas investors turned net sellers of Japanese stocks and

futures for the first time in 16 weeks in the period ending Aug.

1. They sold a net 342 billion yen ($2.3 billion) of shares and

futures, a sharp reversal from net purchases of 1.26 trillion

yen in the previous week.

($1 = 148.2400 yen)