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SINGAPORE — Shares in Asia-Pacific looked set for a mixed start on Tuesday, with investors looking ahead to the release of meeting minutes from the Reserve Bank of Australia.
Futures pointed to a lower open for Japanese stocks. The Nikkei futures contract in Chicago was at 26,515 while its counterpart in Osaka was at 26,460. That compared against the Nikkei 225’s last close at 26,547.05.
Australian stocks looked poised for a higher start, with the SPI futures contract at 7,100, against the S&P/ASX 200’s last close at 7,093.
The Reserve Bank of Australia is set to release minutes from its monetary policy meeting on Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. HK/SIN. Earlier in May, the Australian central bank announced its first rate hike in more than a decade.
“The main interest of the Minutes is whether they give any insight into the appetite of the RBA to do a supersized 40-50bp hike,” Tapas Strickland, an economist at National Australia Bank, wrote in a Tuesday note.
Overnight stateside, the S&P 500 shed 0.39% to 4,008.01 while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.2% to 11,662.79. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 26.76 points, or 0.08%, to 32,223.42.
Currencies
The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was at 104.187 — off levels above 104.5 seen recently.
The Japanese yen traded at 128.99 per dollar, stronger as compared with levels above 130 seen against the greenback last week. The Australian dollar was at $0.6968 following a recent bounce from below $0.693.
