View of the pedestrian mall on Nanjing Road East, Shanghai’s main shopping street.
Bruce Your New Bi | Image Bank | Getty Images
The Asia-Pacific market was scheduled to climb on Wednesday after Wall Street’s three key benchmarks advanced overnight into optimism that U.S.-China trade tensions could ease.
This comes after US President Donald Trump showed that the final tariffs on China were “not near 145%.” However, he added that the duties were “not 0%.”
Trump also said he had “no intention” to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell before his term ends, reducing investors’ concerns about central bank independence.
Japanese benchmark Nikkei 225 The futures contract in Chicago was 35,410, with the Osaka counterpart last traded at 34,820 and set to open at 35,410 against the end of the index of 34,220.60.
Hong Kong’s Hangsen Index futures pointed to 21,772, referring to a stronger open compared to HSI’s final 21,562.32.
The Australian market is also set to open higher, with futures being S&P/ASX 200 Last seen at 7,936, but the final end of the index is 7,816.70.
US futures flew after Trump’s comments that he had no plans to remove Powell from his post as the chairman of the central bank.
On the overnight state side, stocks recovered from a sharp decline in the previous session as investors cheered on the possibility of easing trade tensions between the US and China.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 1,016.57 points (2.66%) to 39,186.98. The S&P 500 rose 2.51% to settle at 5,287.76, while the Nasdaq Composite rose 2.71% to close at 16,300.42.
– Lisa Kailai Han and Alex Harring of CNBC contributed to this report.
