Asian shares mostly lower; oil near 1-year high on output cut views

Asian shares were mostly lower on Tuesday, while oil prices hovered near one-year highs on growing expectations of an output cut by OPEC producers.

Brent crude, slipped 0.2 per cent to $53.05 a barrel after surging as much as 3 per cent on Monday. US crude futures dipped a similar amount to $51.26, after jumping to a four-month high in the previous session.

The overnight gains came after Russia said it was ready to join the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in limiting crude output and Algeria called for similar commitments from other non-OPEC producers.

OPEC aims for agreements to cut about 700,000 barrels per day in its first reduction in eight years.

In equity markets, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan retreated 0.9 per cent after creeping higher on Monday as investors saw less chance of Republican nominee Donald Trump winning next month's presidential election.

But Japan’s Nikkei added 1.1 per cent to hit the highest level in more than a month, thanks to a weaker yen.

In South Korea, Samsung Electronics slumped more than 7 per cent and was on track for its biggest one-day decline in more than four years as the company struggles to contain a deepening crisis over its Galaxy Note7 phone.

The company had halted sales of the Note 7 phones on Tuesday and told owners to stop using them while it investigates the reports of fires in the devices.

The world’s biggest smartphone maker has recalled 2.5 million Note 7s due to faulty batteries, and the latest reports of fires in replacement devices is raising fresh doubts about the firm's quality control procedures.

Samsung’s woes pulled South Korea’s KOSPI down 1 per cent.

China’s CSI 300 index advanced 0.3 per cent, while Hong Hong’s Hang Seng index slipped 1 per cent.

Overnight, US stock indexes closed up between 0.5 per cent and 0.7 per cent, after the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index ended the day 0.9 per cent higher.

“The oil market news proved immensely positive for equities,” Angus Nicholson, market analyst at IG in Melbourne, wrote in a note.

The dollar retained overnight gains on growing expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates this year.

Traders have priced in a 70 per cent chance that the Fed will hike at a December 13-14 policymakers’ meeting, up from 66 per cent early Friday, according to CME Group’s FedWatch tool.

Minutes of Fed meet

Investors are looking to Wednesday’s release of minutes of the latest Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meeting to see how close the Fed was to hiking rates last month.

The US dollar strengthened 0.3 per cent to 103.955 yen on Tuesday, adding to its 0.7 per cent gain on Monday.

The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six global peers, added 0.15 per cent to 97.074, after climbing 0.3 per cent on Monday.

The euro inched down 0.1 per cent to at $1.1127.

The British pound continued its drop, falling 0.3 per cent to $1.2309 on Tuesday, down 5.1 per cent this month.

Trumps’s chances of winning

The Mexican peso held on to most of its 2 per cent gain on Monday against the US dollar on views that Trump’s chances of winning the election were diminishing. Trump has been sharply critical of the country during the campaign.

Paul Ryan, the top Republican in the US Congress, all but conceded on Monday that Hillary Clinton was likely to win the White House on November 8, and said he would put his full energy into preserving Republican majorities in Congress so as not to give her a “blank check’’.

Ryan, speaker of the House of Representatives, said he would not defend Trump or campaign for him after the uproar over the New York businessman’s sexually aggressive comments that surfaced on Friday.

“This is a strong signal that many of the Republican establishment believe Trump’s campaign is so toxic that they are seeking to dissociate themselves from it,” IG’s Nicholson said.

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