Asia buoyed by post-election Wall St rally, dollar bounces

TOKYO - 8 November 2018: Asian stocks scaled a one-month peak on Thursday, after investors drove a Wall Street rally on relief the U.S. midterm elections delivered no major political surprises, while the dollar bounced and pulled away from 2-1/2-week lows.

Spreadbetters expected European stocks to follow Asia higher at the open, with Britain's FTSE .FTSE seen adding 0.36 percent, Germany's DAX .GDAXI rising 0.55 percent and France's CAC .FCHI climbing 0.45 percent.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS was last up 0.8 percent to stand at its highest since Oct. 8.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng .HSI advanced 0.9 percent and the Shanghai Composite Index .SSEC climbed 0.2 percent, receiving a mild lift from China's stronger-than-expected October exports data.

Australian stocks rose 0.5 percent, South Korea's KOSPI .KS11 added 1.3 percent and Japan's Nikkei .N225 gained 1.8 percent.

Wall Street’s main indexes rose more than 2 percent on Wednesday, led by the technology and healthcare sectors as the market breathed a sigh of relief after the U.S. midterm elections, in which Democrats wrested control of the House of Representatives and Republicans retained the Senate. [.N]

“Going forward, we think the removal of uncertainty and realization of the expected outcome should be supportive for risk assets,” Goldman Sachs analysts said in a report.

While a divided Congress will make it harder for President Donald Trump to push through new legislation, such as additional tax cuts, investors do not expect a reversal of recently enacted tax cuts and deregulation.

“The key point after the midterm elections is that U.S. stocks showed they had developed immunity towards higher yields. The last time long-term Treasury yields were at this level a month ago, they had helped trigger a major fall by stocks,” said Junichi Ishikawa, senior FX strategist at IG Securities in Tokyo.

“Steady U.S. fundamentals will support this trend of equities and yields rising in tandem, which should also prop up the dollar in the longer term.”

The 10-year Treasury note yield US10YT=RR rose to 3.25 percent on Wednesday, its highest since Oct. 9, with Wall Street’s rally reducing demand for safe-haven debt. It last stood at 3.23 percent.

The dollar index against a basket of six major currencies gained 0.2 percent to 96.177 .DXY, pulling back from 95.678 plumbed on Wednesday, its lowest since Oct. 22.

That low for the greenback was driven by a knee-jerk reaction to the U.S. midterm election results, with a divided Congress seen dulling Trump’s fiscal stimulus drive.

Some focus was also on the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy due later on Thursday. The Fed, however, is not expected to hike interest rates until its next gathering in December and analysts expected this meeting to have limited market impact.

The central bank has tightened monetary policy three times in 2018, with the latest rate hike coming in September.

“A split Congress is unlikely to materially alter the Fed’s near-term hiking trajectory and the Fed will be biased to keep raising rates until the data or financial conditions turn,” strategists at Bank of America Merrill Lynch wrote.

The euro was up 0.05 percent at $1.1432 EUR= after pulling back sharply from a high of $1.1500 brushed earlier on Wednesday.

The dollar was a shade higher at 113.62 yen JPY= and in striking distance of a one-month peak of 113.82 reached the previous day.

In commodities, U.S. crude futures CLc1 inched up 0.1 percent to $61.73 a barrel after falling to an eight-month trough of $61.20 on Wednesday.

Brent crude LCOc1 dipped 0.08 percent to $72.01 a barrel following a loss of 1.4 percent the previous day.

Oil prices struggled after surging U.S. crude output hit another record and domestic inventories rose more than expected.