Asia up on Wall St. rally and China hopes, euro sags on Greece
Reuters - Mar 30, 2015
Asian stocks rose on Tuesday after a rally on Wall Street and steps by China to shore up its economy boosted risk appetite, while Greek debt worries again haunted the sagging euro.
Tracking overnight gains in U.S. shares, MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS was up 0.4 percent. Japan's Nikkei .N225 added 0.9 percent and Australian shares .AXJO rose 1.3 percent.
The Dow .DJI and S&P 500 .SPX both climbed more than 1 percent Monday with sentiment boosted by Chinese equities, which soared to a seven-year high on hopes for more infrastructure spending and monetary easing.
After unveiling details over the weekend for a modern "Silk Road" that could pump tens of billions of dollars into investment, China late on Monday announced steps to ease housing taxes and lending rules to prop up sliding house prices imperilling the world's second largest economy.
"Tax cuts, reductions to down payments on second homes, along with further moves to requirement ratios have all been introduced to assist China's slowing housing sector and will be a medium term positive in the global growth story," Evan Lucas, market strategist at IG in Melbourne, said in a note to clients.