AFP, Hong Kong :
Asian markets struggled to hold on to their earlier gains on Thursday with the North Korea crisis continuing to play on investor confidence despite Donald Trump’s deal to raise the US debt ceiling.
Markets rallied at the start of the day as the surprise deal between the president and Democrats to lift the US borrowing limit provided some much-needed good news at the end of a turbulent week.
While tensions over Pyongyang’s weekend nuclear test have abated there are fears the North is planning to launch another missile this weekend, riling an already furious Unites States.
Trump’s insistence to Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping that military action was not his “first choice” and a call for a diplomatic solution provided some solace but fresh provocation could rattle markets again.
“It’s clear that global leaders see negotiations as the way forward. The Chinese and Russian leaders have both again in the past 24 hours said that negotiations are the way forward,” said Greg McKenna, chief market strategist at AxiTrader.
“And President Trump himself said that military action in North Korea was not his first choice, but we’ll see what happens.”
By the end of the day Seoul was up 1.1 percent, while the won was also well up but Tokyo’s morning rally was pared on a strengthening yen, with the Nikkei closing 0.2 percent higher.
Hong Kong was 0.3 percent down in the afternoon-reversing early advances-and Shanghai shed 0.6 percent while Sydney and Singapore were both flat.
Asian markets struggled to hold on to their earlier gains on Thursday with the North Korea crisis continuing to play on investor confidence despite Donald Trump’s deal to raise the US debt ceiling.
Markets rallied at the start of the day as the surprise deal between the president and Democrats to lift the US borrowing limit provided some much-needed good news at the end of a turbulent week.
While tensions over Pyongyang’s weekend nuclear test have abated there are fears the North is planning to launch another missile this weekend, riling an already furious Unites States.
Trump’s insistence to Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping that military action was not his “first choice” and a call for a diplomatic solution provided some solace but fresh provocation could rattle markets again.
“It’s clear that global leaders see negotiations as the way forward. The Chinese and Russian leaders have both again in the past 24 hours said that negotiations are the way forward,” said Greg McKenna, chief market strategist at AxiTrader.
“And President Trump himself said that military action in North Korea was not his first choice, but we’ll see what happens.”
By the end of the day Seoul was up 1.1 percent, while the won was also well up but Tokyo’s morning rally was pared on a strengthening yen, with the Nikkei closing 0.2 percent higher.
Hong Kong was 0.3 percent down in the afternoon-reversing early advances-and Shanghai shed 0.6 percent while Sydney and Singapore were both flat.
