Asian shares hit 10-year high on Wall Street record finishes

Asian shares inched up to a 10-year high on Wednesday, cheered by record highs on Wall Street, while the dollar's rise against the yen helped boost Japanese shares.

The S&P 500, Dow Jones industrials and Nasdaq Composite all marked record finishes as investors' concerns faded about North Korean tensions as well as the impact of Hurricane Irma.

Gains were kept in check, however, by a decline in shares of Apple Inc after it unveiled its newest line of iPhones. Apple fell 0.6 per cent but pared some losses in after-hours trade.

The new iPhone's sales will have repercussions beyond Apple for many suppliers as well as its rivals.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was slightly higher in early trade, while Japan's Nikkei stock index added 0.4 per cent to a one-month high, getting a tailwind from a weaker yen.

"The Nikkei is not rising on fundamentals at the moment, but rather on supply and demand moves, as the weaker yen prompts investors to cover short positions" that they took during recent bouts of risk aversion, said Yutaka Miura, a senior technical analyst at Mizuho Securities.
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Apple may price iPhone X at a hefty $1,000

Apple is expected to sell its fanciest iPhone yet for $1,000, crossing into a new financial frontier that will test how much consumers are willing to pay for a device that's become an indispensable part of modern life.

The unveiling of a dramatically redesigned iPhone will likely be the marquee moment tomorrow when Apple hosts its first product event at its new spaceship-like headquarters in Cupertino, California.

True to its secretive ways, Apple won't confirm that it will be introducing a new iPhone, though a financial forecast issued last month telegraphed something significant is in the pipeline.

In addition to several new features, a souped-up "anniversary" iPhone -- coming a decade after Apple's late co-founder Steve Jobs unveiled the first version -- could also debut at an attention-getting $999 price tag, twice what the original iPhone cost. It would set a new price threshold for any smartphone intended to appeal to a mass market.

Various leaks have indicated the new phone will feature a sharper display, a so-called OLED screen that will extend from edge to edge of the device, thus eliminating the exterior gap, or "bezel," that currently surrounds most phone screens.
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