Asian Stock Market: Traces mildly bid S&P 500 Futures amid mixed concerns

• Asia-Pacific shares remain positive for the second consecutive day tracking the global cues.
• Receding fears of Fed’s aggression, chatters over China’s zero-covid policy and private investment plans favor bulls.
• Downbeat Aussie data, higher covid count challenge bulls ahead of the key US inflation data.

Asia-Pacific traders witness another positive day despite posting mild gains on Tuesday morning. In doing so, the region tracks Wall Street’s upbeat performance, as well as the recently firmer S&P 500 Futures.

 That said, the receding fears of the US Federal Reserve’s (Fed) aggressive rate hikes could be cited as the main catalysts for the market’s recent optimism. On the same line are headlines suggesting China’s push for higher private investment.

On the contrary, an uptick in China’s new locally transmitted coronavirus cases, from 535 to 843, joins the rejection of taking down the zero-covid policy to challenge the optimists.

Amid these plays, MSCI’s index of the Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rise half a percent while Japan’s Nikkei 225 rises to the highest levels in seven weeks, up 1.41% intraday near 27,900 at the latest.

It should be noted that the news suggesting an absence of stealth intervention by Japan in the third quarter (Q3) seemed to have favored the bulls in Tokyo. Elsewhere, Australia’s downbeat prints of Westpac Consumer Confidence for November and mixed prints of National Australia Bank’s (NAB) sentiment gauges for October seemed to have probed the share buyers in Canberra.

Further, stocks in China print mild losses while those from New Zealand also remain in the red amid covid fears, as well as the hopes that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) will keep the hawkish bias intact.

On a broader front, the recently mixed comments from the US Federal Reserve (Fed) policymakers, suggesting a halt in the strong rate hike trajectory, especially after Friday’s mixed US jobs report, helps the US equity buyers to remain hopeful even as the yields are firmer.

Moving on, a light calendar could keep challenging the traders ahead of Thursday’s US Consumer Price Index (CPI) for October, expected to ease to 8.0% YoY from 8.2%.