Asian shares gain, lifted by oil price rally on Wall Street

The Russell 2000 index of small-company stocks, which has risen for the previous 13 trading days, fell sharply in early trading but recovered its losses and moved 0.2 percent higher.

The mixed performance on Wall Street comes as traders seem to be taking a breather following the upward move seen over the past couple weeks. Eastern time. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index dipped 1 point to 2,202. The Nasdaq Composite .IXIC was off 26.10 points, or 0.48 percent, at 5,360.26.

The appeal of potential tax cuts, higher spending on infrastructure and more minimal regulations in the banking and healthcare industries under Trump’s administration have started a long string of rally, especially in these sectors, since the election. “Momentum is proving strong enough to overrule overbought conditions, so we think it is appropriate to be buying breakouts”.

The Nasdaq composite, however, couldn’t sustain its momentum from Tuesday’s close when it recorded a second straight day of record highs.

While the UK’s FTSE 100 Index has slipped by 0.2%, the French CAC 40 Index and the German DAX Index are down by 0.5% and 0.7%, respectively.

Spot gold was up 0.3 percent at $1,212 an ounce by 2:59 p.m. EST (1959 GMT), while US gold futures for December delivery settled up 0.09 percent at $1,209.80.

The dollar rose modestly against the yen after touching a session high of 111.35 yen, just below Monday’s almost 6-month high of 111.36 yen, on data showing a surge in USA existing home sales last month. The Dow transportation average jumped 1 percent.

“People are in a holiday mindset today, but nothing appears to be in the horizon to derail the recent market strength”, said Andre Bakhos, managing director at Janlyn Capital in Bernardsville, New Jersey. Two-year note yields US2YT=RR rose as far as 1.107 percent on Tuesday, the highest since April 2010.

Still, the market is starting to look expensive with the S&P 500 trading near 17.3 times forward 12-month earnings, compared to the 10-year median of 14.7, according to StarMine data. The stock advanced $9.32, or 10.1 percent, to $101.33 and reached an all-time high.

The data from the USA financial watchdog showed on Friday that in the first week after the US elections speculators hardly increased their net long positions in the dollar.

Brent crude LCOc1 was up 11 cents at $49.23 a barrel, while USA crude CLc1 added 10 cents to $48.13 a barrel. Its stock gained $2.07, or 8.6 percent, to $26.18. Spot gold prices were last down $1.64, or 0.14 percent, at $1,212.02 an ounce. Heating oil fell 1 cent to $1.52 per gallon. Biogen sank $18.87, or 5.9 percent, to $299.24 and Merck fell 94 cents, or 1.5 percent, to $60.77. The Kospi in South Korea advanced 0.2 percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng ended unchanged. The rally was led by the energy sector, which jumped sharply thanks to higher oil prices on the back of renewed hope of some sort of deal from OPEC.

Breaking with a pattern of borrowing overshoots earlier in the financial year, official figures showed public borrowing in October was 25 percent less than a year earlier at 4.8 billion pounds ($6.0 billion), its lowest since 2008 and beating all economists’ forecasts.

On November 22, 2016, the API (American Petroleum Institute) reported a fall of 1.3 MMbbls (million barrels) in crude oil inventories for the week ended November 18, 2016. Prices earlier rose to their highest levels this month on reports that cartel members had overcome their internal disputes.