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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Asia stocks bounce after losses, dollar sags on weak US inflation data

Asian stocks bounced on Monday after three losing sessions, tracking a firmer Wall Street, while the dollar was weighed down by weak US inflation data which dampened prospects of another Federal Reserve interest rate hike later this year.

Investors awaited a batch of Chinese data due later in the session (0200 GMT), including industrial output and retail sales. The readings are expected to show continued solid growth but markets are edgy after softer-than-expected trade data last week.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS was up 0.4 percent. The index had fallen for three straight days prior on escalating tensions between the United States and North Korea.

Australian stocks rose 0.2 percent and South Korea's KOSPI .KS11 climbed 0.7 percent.

Japan's Nikkei bucked the trend and fell 1.2 percent as a stronger yen overshadowed much better-than-expected second quarter economic growth.

The three major US  stocks indexes snapped three days of losses and ended higher on Friday, as investors bet on slower US  rate hikes following weaker-than-expected consumer price data. But gains were muted by increasingly aggressive exchanges between Washington and Pyongyang. [.N]
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