A major index of Asian shares rose to five-month highs yesterday, taking its cue from gains on Wall Street after a strike in Kuwait helped pull crude oil prices above their overnight lows. 
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.8%, after touching its highest intraday levels since November. On Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average climbed to its highest level since July. 
Japan’s Nikkei stock index ended up 3.7%, a day after it fell 3.4% as investors assessed the impact of earthquakes in southwestern Japan’s Kyushu on manufacturers’ supply chains. 
“The effects of the Dow reaching a nine-month high created a buying trend that helped lift the Nikkei today,” said Hiroki Allen, chief representative of Superfund Securities Japan in Tokyo. 
The Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) was up 0.1% after the Bank of Korea kept rates unchanged as expected. 
Crude oil futures firmed after a choppy Asian session and remained well off lows plumbed on Monday after weekend talks failed in Doha, where producers had hoped to curb a supply glut. A strike in Kuwait temporarily slashed the country’s oil output by more than half, and helped pull crude prices higher. 
Brent crude added about 0.8% at $43.26 a barrel, while US crude rose about 1% to $40.18. 
Commodity-linked currencies pared their steep losses logged after the Doha deal breakdown.  The Australian dollar was last up 0.5% at $0.7791 after earlier rising as high as $0.7797, its highest since June. On Monday, it had skidded as low as $0.7594.  In minutes of its April 5 policy meeting, Australia’s central bank cautioned that a rising Aussie could tilt the economy off balance. 
The perceived safe-haven yen slumped in line with the recovery in risk appetite. The dollar added 0.1% to 108.95 yen, while the euro added 0.3% to 123.48 yen, moving away from the previous session’s three-year low. 
Against the dollar, the euro edged up about 0.1% to $1.1324, as investors looked ahead to the European Central Bank’s policy meeting tomorrow. While no change is expected, investors are awaiting Mario Draghi’s news conference for clues on the central bank’s thinking. 
The US Federal Reserve will meet next week, and is also expected to keep its policy unchanged, though any suggestion that more hikes are on the way sooner rather than later would lift the greenback. 
New York Fed President William Dudley said in a speech on Monday that economic conditions are “mostly favourable” yet the central bank remains cautious in raising interest rates because threats loom. 
For the second time in as many weeks, Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren warned on Monday that futures markets, which see only one modest rate hike in each of the next few years, are off the mark. 
Gold posted its best quarterly jump in nearly 30 years in the first quarter on expectations that the Fed will not be able to raise rates this year as many times as some had believed. 
Spot gold was up 0.5% at $1,237.06 an ounce yesterday, erasing an earlier drop.


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