Asian stocks reached a more than four-month high on Wednesday, lifted by optimism that the United States and China might be able to hammer out a deal to resolve their nearly year-long trade dispute.
TOKYO (Reuters) – Asian stocks reached a more than four-month high on Wednesday, lifted by optimism that the United States and China might be able to hammer out a deal to resolve their nearly year-long trade dispute.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.6 percent to its highest level since early October and Japan’s Nikkei average climbed 1.3 percent to an eight-week high.
China’s Shanghai Composite and blue-chip CSI 300 were both up around 2 percent to multi-month highs, with IT shares leading the gains on Beijing’s promise to push for core technology and innovation.
Asia took its cue from Wall Street, where the Dow and Nasdaq each rallied about 1.5 percent overnight on optimism over U. S.-China trade negotiations and a tentative U. S. congressional spending deal to avert another partial government shutdown.
European shares were expected to open higher, with financial spread-betters seeing Britain’s FTSE, France’s CAC and Germany’s DAX each ticking up between 0.4 and 0.5 percent.
U. S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he could see letting the March 1 deadline for reaching a trade agreement with China “slide for a little while,” if the two sides were close to a complete deal.
