Asian shares were mostly higher Wednesday morning on the back of a strengthening dollar and quiet trading ahead of remarks by President-elect Donald Trump.
KEEPING SCORE: Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 rose 0.4 percent in the morning session to 19,370.86. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 added 0.4 percent to 5,782.90. South Korea’s Kospi was up 1.2 percent at 2,071.09. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng surged 0.7 percent to 22,911.06, while the Shanghai Composite was little changed at 3,161.87. Shares in Southeast Asia were mostly higher.
WALL STREET: The Nasdaq composite index notched its fourth record-high close in a row, increasing 20 points, or 0.4 percent, to 5,551.82. The S&P 500 ended unchanged at 2,268.90. The Dow slipped 31.85 points, or 0.2 percent, to 19,855.53.
TRUMP FACTOR: Investors are awaiting Trump’s first news conference in nearly six months, as questions fly over Russia’s role in the election year hacking of Democratic groups. Markets are awaiting news on Trump’s plan to disengage from his businesses and on his policy positions.
THE QUOTE: „Except for some minor commotion here and there as risk sentiment continued to yo-yo, markets have been hushed overnight as caution takes hold, ahead of Donald Trump’s“ press conference, said Illka Gobius, managing director at Pinpoint.
ENERGY: Benchmark crude rose 13 cents to $50.95 a barrel. It lost $1.14, or 2.2 percent, to close at $50.82 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, which is used to price oil sold internationally, added 11 cents to $53.75.
CURRENCIES: The dollar rose to 116.17 yen from 115.65 yen in late trading Tuesday in Asia. The euro fell to $1.0547 from $1.0607.
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Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at https://twitter.com/yurikageyama
Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/yuri-kageyama

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With bond yields rising in recent months, there’s been a notion that investors will flee the bond market and move into stocks.
However, Vanguard’s chief investment officer, Tim Buckley, isn’t buying it.
„There’s this false premise out there of this Great Rotation — that everyone is going to leave bond funds and go into equity funds and it’s probably quite the opposite,“ he said in an interview with “ Power Lunch “ on Tuesday.
„The last thing you want to see people do is sell their bonds and buy more equities and put more risk in their portfolio,“ added Buckley, who helps oversee $3.8 trillion in assets under management.
In fact, he agrees with former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers , who told „Squawk Box“ on Tuesday morning that he believes the market rally since Election Day is a „sugar high. “
Buckley said the market was fairly valued before President-elect Donald Trump ’s victory, and while it has run up since then, the fundamentals haven’t really changed.
„There’s a lot of euphoria in the market,“ he said, noting that people are excited about the prospect of infrastructure spending, cutting tax rates and the possibility of repatriating corporate profits.
„It’s easy to speculate about those things but we don’t know policy one around them and what form they’ll take, because it really matters the form that infrastructure spending takes and what happens with those corporate profits that are repatriated,“ Buckley said.
He advises individual investors to stick with their plans. For example, if someone has a 60-40 split in stocks and bonds, continue to buy into the market in that proportion.
„To do anything else is to speculate and that’s not investing. Investing, at the end of the day, you’re looking out a 10-year period not a 10-day period. „

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The corporate debt market is kicking off the new year with a bang.
Companies have issued a whopping $65 billion in high-grade debt so far since Jan. 2, the most ever for this time of year. The beginning of the year is normally an active period, but the amount issued so far is already more than half the $125.6 billion issued during the full month of January 2016 — and that was also a record, according to data analysis firm Informa Global Markets.
The gusher of new debt also coincidentally comes as Congress is about to discuss corporate tax reform , which could include eliminating the deductibility of interest paid on debt.
As of last Friday, the first week of the year saw $52 billion in investment-grade issuance, a record first week. „It was led by financials,“ said Informa analyst Chris Reich. „Financials accounted for 85 percent of the total of weekly volume. “
Reich said the pace slowed Tuesday, with just $2.6 billion, but more is expected later in the week, including a possible $6 billion or so offering for a merger.
Jon Duensing, head of corporate credit at Amundi Smith Breeden, said the pace was well above normal, but it fits the pattern of financial firms coming out early in the new year — and they normally do it ahead of the earnings period, which for banks kicks off in earnest on Friday. Issuers this year included Citigroup , Barclays, Credit Suisse, Caterpillar Financial and Ford Motor Credit.
One factor driving the volume of deals could be expectations that interest rates will be lower earlier in the year, with the Fed expected to hike three times in 2017.
He said it’s not likely the rush is due to tax law changes. „It’s probably more related to seeing markets that are open, investors that are willing to invest [and] the availability and cost of capital,“ Duensing said.
In a note, Goldman Sachs economists said they expect some type of limit on deductibility of interest expenses, and they suggest three options for Congress in dealing with it: „…changes to interest deductibility and the depreciation of capital investment appears fairly likely, as lawmakers have debated such changes for years and incremental options are available,“ they wrote.
The first way would be to grandfather interest payments on existing debt and allow companies to continue to depreciate existing capital expenditures. But future debt would be covered by the new law and capital expenditures would be fully expensed. Alternately, lawmakers could gradually phase out the old system in steps. A third way was proposed by Trump himself, and that would be to offer taxpayers a one-time choice of staying in the old system with full interest deduction and partial depreciation deductions or switching to the new system.
„That could be very transformational. There’s still a lot of question marks,“ said Duensing. „There’s still a lot of uncertainty about what the final rule of law would look like. “ He also said there are a lot of variables and options that could be discussed.
„The idea might be if you remove the interest benefit from debt, maybe if you go buy a widget-maker instead of depreciating the widget-maker, you’re allowed to completely expense that,“ he said.
He said if the law does take effect in some form, it could mean a lot of changes ahead for the market. „The investment grade corporate bond market is a little under $6 trillion. The U. S. dollar high-yield market is $1.5 trillion. Both of those markets have grown relative to the size of the U. S. economy, and there have been questions of how sustainable is the continued growth of the corporate balance sheet on the corporate debt side. This could be one of the catalysts that slows that growth and perhaps reverses it. We’re at letter A and a long way from Z,“ he said.
Another part of the tax discussions would be more simple to enact, he said. That is the proposed repatriation of funds kept offshore by U. S. corporations, which could be given a one-time break to bring the cash home. There has been much talk about whether companies would use the cash to buy back stock or issue dividends, or use it to reinvest in their businesses in the U. S., as the Trump administration would like to see.
Duensing sees a third alternative. „Once that money goes on shore, we think they could retire and pay down some debt,“ he said. He estimates about half of it could be used for debt repayment, since companies already raised debt to buy stock, with the idea that they had the cash overseas.
Duensing said the idea of the returning capital going to retire debt has had a positive effect on some spreads of issuers in the investment grade market.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts wrote Tuesday that they believe issuers saw higher rates coming and decided to rush to the market early this year. They had expected a total $90 to $100 billion of issuance for the entire month of January.
The analysts have previously said they expect 17 percent less corporate issuance this year, due to rule changes around the one-time repatriation tax holiday for overseas corporate cash. According to Informa, 2016’s investment grade issuance was a record $1.28 trillion.
„That would ease supply pressures for US companies with significant cash balances held abroad which means particularly in the Technology and Pharma sectors. Hence we look for a $50bn reduction in supply next year due to potential repatriation of foreign cash,“ they wrote.
The Bank of America analysts also said they see a favorable market in the early new year with tighter spreads. They note that demand is picking up, and they expect the supply to slow down.
„High grade corporate bond prices have rebounded about 1.5 percent from their December 16th 2016 post-election lows and bond fund/ETF flows have reacted predictably. Hence during the most recent week (ended Jan 4th) we saw a large inflow of $2.71bn – more than offsetting the $2bn cumulative post-election outflows prior to that. This week also saw the return of foreign buying after their absence in December, due in part to year-end dollar funding strains,“ they wrote in a note Tuesday.

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Morocco has banned the sale, production and import of the burka, according to local reports.
Letters announcing the ban were sent out on Monday, giving businesses 48 hours to get rid of their stock, the reports stated.
There was no official announcement from the government, but unnamed officials told outlets the decision was made due to „security concerns“.
It is unclear if Morocco is now intending to ban the garment outright.
A high-ranking interior ministry official confirmed the ban to the Le360 news site, adding that „bandits have repeatedly used this garment to perpetrate their crimes“.
The burka, which covers the entire face and body, is not widely worn in Morocco, with most women favouring the hijab, which does not shroud the face.
Women in Salafist circles, and in more conservative regions in the north, are more likely to wear the niqab, which leaves the area around the eyes uncovered.
The decision has split opinion in the North African kingdom, led by King Mohammed VI, who favours a moderate version of Islam.
Hammad Kabbaj, a preacher barred from standing in parliamentary elections in October over his alleged ties to „extremism“, denounced the ban as „unacceptable“, mocking the „Morocco of freedom and human rights“ which „considers the wearing of the Western swimsuit on the beaches an untouchable right“.
Meanwhile. the Northern Moroccan National Observatory for Human Development said it considered the measure an „arbitrary decision that is an indirect violation of women’s freedom of expression and wearing what reflects their identities or their religious, political or social beliefs“.
But Nouzha Skalli, a former family and social development minister, welcomed the ban as „an important step in the fight against religious extremism“.

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