Asian stocks advance on higher oil, China data in focus

The stocks on the Asian bourses shrugged-off a weak close on the Wall Street overnight, and edged higher this Tuesday, as sentiment remained underpinned higher oil and metals’ prices, which lift the energy and resource sector stocks.

Moreover, increased doubts over a Fed rate hike this year, following poor US economic released published yesterday, also provided some respite to the Asian corporate world. A bout of profit-taking cannot be ruled out ahead of the Chinese data dump lined up for release in the week ahead.

While the Australian stocks trade with size-able gains as the RBA minutes offered no new surprises, while RBA Governor Lowe sounded quite upbeat on the economy as also on the exchange rate level.

Meanwhile, Japan’s Nikkei 225 trade muted around 16,900, the Australian S&P/ASX 200 gains +0.48% to 5441. The Chinese equities defend gains, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite index up +0.11%, while CSI300 index also trades +0.08% higher. Hong Kong markets jump 1% to trade around 23,270 levels.