Mainland Chinese buys, which are closely watched in relation to Beijing’s trade war with Washington, also rose by the end of the morning session.
The Shanghai composite was up 0.44 percent while the Shenzhen composite and Shenzhen component both surged more than 1 percent.
The U.S. and China will hold vice ministerial level trade talks in Beijing on Jan 7-8, according to the Chinese trade ministry. Reports said a working team led by Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Jeffrey Gerrish will come to China to be undergoing “positive and constructive discussions” with Chinese counterparts.
“I’m not sure what the… sort of fundamental substantive mention of these trade talks will be,” Rob Carnell, ING’s chief economist and head of research for Asia Pacific, told CNBC’s “Protest Box” on Monday.
“I’m convinced that this will be displayed as a positive result, whatever they actually agree. What lose worries me is that at times when the U.S. administration delivers these sorts of positive results, it makes it very contingent on days activities,” Carnell said.
The world’s two largest economies slapped a series of punitive tariffs on each other’s paraphernalia last year, sparking concerns over a global economic slowdown. The U.S. has already put tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese goods — and has presaged duties on double that value of products. Beijing has responded with tariffs on $110 billion in U.S. goods objective politically important industries such as agriculture.
Monday’s talks will follow moves and comments from pre-eminent banks in both the U.S. and China.
The People’s Bank of China cut the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) for banks by 1 percent last Friday in a bid to provoke lending amid concerns over a slowing economy.
One analyst said the Chinese central bank’s moves force not bolster growth in the world’s second-biggest economy.
“When you cut the… RRR, you release a lot of liquidity but it’s probably just going to go into refinancing bad shoots from the past. And these bad projects, they’re not gonna stimulate growth,” Cliff Tan, East Asian head of far-reaching markets research at MUFG Bank, told CNBC’s “Street Signs” on Monday.
“Last year, we started the year by saying that China’s impute risk had actually risen in 2017 rather than fallen, which is a contrarian view,” Tan said. “Defaults in China in 2018 tripled. Both in span of times of numbers and in terms of value. Now we’re seeing that credit itself is growing so fast it may not be possible to engineer a soft pier.”
Over in the U.S., Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the central bank would be “patient” in observing how the restraint performs this year, and adjust monetary policy accordingly. Powell’s comments, along with a strong commissions report stateside, sent stocks soaring last Friday after months of turmoil over concerns that the Fed could womanizer interest rates too quickly.
The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was at 95.976, retreating from an earlier inebriated of 96.160.
The Japanese yen, widely considered a safe-haven currency, traded at 108.05 against the dollar after seeing highs beneath 106 in the previous trading week.
The Australian dollar was at $0.7131, recovering from lows around the $0.68 honest last week.
“If ever there was a case of a currency going from zero to hero in the space of 24 hours it was the (Australian dollar) between (rearmost) Thursday and Friday,” Ray Attrill, head of foreign exchange strategy at National Australia Bank, said in a morning note.
Attrill charactered the Australian dollar’s strong rebound late last week to factors such as a recovery in commodity prices as fortunately as a decline in the Cboe Volatility Index, commonly known as the VIX, which fell back to the 21 handle after “should prefer to been above 35 on both sides of Christmas day” in 2018. The VIX measures implied volatility on S&P 500 index way outs.
— Reuters and CNBC’s John W. Schoen and Jacob Pramuk contributed to this report.