Stock market today: Asian shares gain after Wall St regains its stride

BANGKOK -- Asian shares advanced Tuesday after most U.S. stocks ticked higher to recover some of their swoon from last week.

Oil prices fell and U.S. futures edged higher.

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 rose 0.5% to 38,414.43 and the Kospi in Seoul was up 0.1% to 2,471.95.

Chinese shares rebounded from early losses. They have wavered under concern over potential tariff hikes on by President-elect Donald Trump’s future administration and worries that recently announced stimulus policies won't have enough impact to break the economy out of the doldrums.

The Shanghai Composite index rose 0.7% to 3,346.01, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng dipped and then recovered, adding 0.4% higher to 19,651.75.

“The broader market sentiment remains cautious, with futures showing resilience even as reasonable fears of a looming global trade war cast a shadow over bolder directional moves,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.

India's Sensex jumped 1.4%, while the Taiex in Taiwan surged 1.3%. In Bangkok, the SET gained 1.1%.

On Monday, the S&P 500 rose 0.4% to 5,893.62 for its first gain in three days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.1% to 43,389. The Nasdaq composite gained 0.6% to 18,791.81.

Stocks regained some momentum after giving back more than half their postelection gains at the end of last week. Investors had sent the S&P 500 nearly 4% higher in the days immediately following Trump’s presidential win. Bank stocks, smaller companies and other areas of the market seen as the biggest winners from Trump’s preference for lower tax rates, higher tariffs and lighter regulation did particularly well.

Attention also has turned to who Trump might nominate as his future Treasury secretary.

“Given the large U.S. budget deficit, investors will probably want to see a safe pair of hands being chosen,” ING Economics said in a commentary.

CVS Health rallied 5.4% after adding four new directors to its board. Liberty Energy also helped pull the market upward after rising 4.9%. President-elect Donald Trump named its CEO, Chris Wright, as his nominee for Secretary of Energy.

Trading of Spirit Airlines’ stock, meanwhile, was halted after the budget carrier reached an agreement with its debtholders on a plan to take it through Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The airline will continue to fly while it restructures, but it will also likely wipe out the holdings of all its current stock investors.

Investors have been bracing for some potential downsides of Trump’s reshaping of the economy. Moderna rose 7.2% on Monday but is still down since word came out that Trump wants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine activist, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

Worries about potentially higher inflation under Trump have also sent Treasury yields upward in the bond market. That could tie the Federal Reserve’s hands, when the central bank is trying to lower interest rates to ease the brakes off the economy and keep the job market humming.

Several big-name companies will be reporting their latest quarterly results this week, including market heavyweight Nvidia on Wednesday. The chip company, with its total market value of nearly $3.5 trillion, will need to hit analysts’ high expectations for growth during the latest quarter to justify its big stock price, which has surged 183% this year.

Other big companies set to report this week include Lowe’s and Walmart on Tuesday, Target on Wednesday and Deere on Thursday.

The big-box retailers will be reporting after an update on Friday said shoppers spent more at U.S. retailers generally last month than expected.

In other dealings early Tuesday, benchmark U.S. crude oil shed 20 cents to $68.97 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Brent crude, the international standard, declined 16 to $73.14 per barrel.

The dollar fell to 154.31 Japanese yen from 154.67 yen. The euro slipped to $1.0583 from $1.0599.