Asian shares jumped, with Japanese stocks hitting a 29-year high, as hopes that a long-awaited U pandemic relief package would be expanded and a Brexit trade deal supported investor risk appetite
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Asian shares jumped on Tuesday, with Japanese stocks hitting a 29-year high, as hopes that a long-awaited U.S. pandemic relief package would be expanded and a Brexit trade deal supported investor risk appetites.
Japan's
Nikkei leapt 0.9% to its highest since March 1991, while Australian shares
climbed 0.7% and futures for the S&P 500 added 0.3%.
The U.S. House of
Representatives had voted earlier to increase stimulus payments to qualified
Americans to $2,000 from $600, sending the measure on to the Senate for a vote.
While it is not clear how
the measure will fare in the Senate, President Donald Trump's signing on Sunday
of a $2.3 trillion pandemic bill, which included the $600 payments, had sent
shares on Wall Street to record highs overnight as it increased optimism about
an economic recovery.
"With the Brexit...and
the U.S. stimulus deal now in the rear-view mirror, there is a sense of relief
that we have avoided the respective worst-case scenarios," said Stephen
Innes, chief global market strategist at Axi, a broker.
Firmer demand for riskier
assets kept the U.S. dollar, which is often seen as a "safe-haven"
asset, on the back foot. It was down 0.02% against a basket of major
currencies.
Shorting the dollar has
been a popular trade recently and calculations by Reuters based on data released
by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Monday suggested this could
endure. Short positions on the dollar swelled in the week ended Dec. 21 to
$26.6 billion, the highest in three months.
Sterling softened to
$1.3462 as investors continued to take profits in the currency following the
confirmation last week of a trade UK-EU trade deal that was widely expected.
No comments:
Post a Comment