SINGAPORE—Asian stocks rose on Tuesday while US Treasury yields steadied allowing a bit of a breathing room for the US dollar as investors took stock of the debt load of the world’s biggest economy and awaited trade deals.
Moody’s downgrade of its rating for US sovereign credit last week – due to concerns about that nation’s growing $36 trillion debt pile – led to a selloff in Treasuries on Monday but that stabilised by Asian trading hours on Tuesday.
“The Moody’s downgrade was a temporary shock and rather meaningless in the bigger picture,” said Kyle Rodda, senior financial market analyst at Capital.com.
“But then we’re not really being fed any kind of fresh new news for investors to buy into… We haven’t gotten any new deals coming through.”
With little indication of trade deals on the way, markets are struggling for direction, analysts said.
The 30-year bond yield was 3.5 basis points lower at 4.906 percent after hitting an 18-month high of 5.037 percent in the previous trading session. Major US stock indexes recovered from early loss to end mostly flat.
That left the MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan 0.36 percent higher, hovering near the seven-month high touched last week. Japan’s Nikkei gained 0.65 percent in early trade.
Chinese stocks were steady at the open after the local central bank cut benchmark lending rates for the first time since October, while five of China’s biggest state-owned banks also lowered deposit interest rates.
The blue-chip index was 0.15 percent higher whereas Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index rose 1 percent.
