Asian stocks mixed, dollar drifts before megacap earnings, jobs data

TOKYO : Asian stocks were mixed in volatile trading on Tuesday as investors girded for three days of tech megacap earnings reports on Wall Street, kicking off with Google parent Alphabet later in the day.
The dollar drifted not far from a three-month high with one of the Federal Reserve’s preferred employment gauges – the JOLTS job openings report – due on Tuesday, ahead of highly anticipated monthly non-farm payrolls data on Friday. U.S. Treasury yields eased from three-month peaks.
The yen found its footing following Monday’s plunge to a three-month low as the coalition government’s drubbing in weekend elections clouded the outlook for Japanese fiscal and monetary policies. The Nikkei index recovered from a cautious start to build on the previous session’s gains.
The U.S. election has entered its final stretch, with opinion polls still too close to call a winner, despite some betting sites and financial markets leaning toward a win for Republican Donald Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris.
Crude ticked up slightly following its plunge on Monday on signs the war in the Middle East would not widen, after Israel avoided targeting oil and nuclear facilities in a retaliatory strike on Iran at the weekend.
The Nikkei rose 0.65 per cent as of 0213 GMT, building on its 1.82 per cent rally in the previous session. It started the day down 0.21 per cent.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was 0.65 per cent higher, paring earlier gains of as much as 1.6 per cent. Mainland Chinese blue chips slipped 0.1 per cent, giving up an early rise of 0.68 per cent.
U.S. S&P 500 futures were flat after the cash index gained 0.26 per cent overnight.
“The conviction to take these markets higher, we just don’t have that,” said Tony Sycamore, a markets analyst at IG. “We’re in a very, very tricky period here. It just doesn’t make sense to be chasing risk at this time.”
The bulk of the “Magnificent Seven” group of megacap technology stocks that have driven Wall Street to all-time highs this year report financial results this week, starting with Alphabet. Earnings from Meta Platforms and Microsoft are due on Wednesday, followed by Apple and Amazon on Thursday.
The dollar was little changed against a basket of six major peers, which includes the yen and euro. The dollar index stood at 104.24, after reaching 104.57 overnight, matching the high from Wednesday of last week, a level previously not seen since July 30.
Recent robust U.S. economic data, including evidence of a resilient job market, have seen bets pared back for easing this year by the Federal Reserve, boosting the dollar.
The U.S. currency has also been buoyed by rising market expectations for an election win for Trump, whose tariff, tax and immigration policies are seen as inflationary, thus negative for bonds and positive for the dollar.
Ten-year U.S. Treasury yields eased to 4.272 per cent on Tuesday, after reaching the highest since July 11 at 4.3 per cent overnight.
The dollar slipped 0.24 per cent to 152.92 yen, but that followed a rally to the highest since July 31 at 153.885 yen on Monday.
In Japan, a period of wrangling to secure a coalition is likely after Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s Liberal Democratic Party and its junior partner Komeito lost their majority in parliament, in a scathing result that potentially means bigger fiscal spending and complicates the Bank of Japan’s push to normalise interest rates.
The head of the opposition Democratic Party for the People said on Tuesday that the central bank should avoid making big changes in its ultra-loose monetary policy now because real wage growth is still at a standstill.
The BOJ next decides policy on Thursday, with no change expected.
The euro held steady at $1.0814, and sterling was flat at $1.2973.
Gold rose 0.35 per cent to $2,751.76 an ounce, pushing up towards the record high of $2,758.37 from last week.
Brent crude futures gained 0.6 per cent to $71.86 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was at $67.83 a barrel, up 0.7 per cent. Both contracts tumbled 6 per cent on Monday, hitting their lowest since Oct. 1.