Asian Stocks subdued, dollar hovers near 9-Month High

Asian stocks were subdued early on Monday after Wall Street's sluggish performance at the end of last week, while the dollar hovered near nine-month highs as fresh comments from a Federal Reserve official boosted bets of a rate hike by year-end. 

 

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan inched down 0.1 percent. 

 

Japan's Nikkei stood little changed, while South Korea's Kospi gained 0.4 percent. 

 

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On Friday in Wall Street, the S&P 500 and the Dow were little changed and the Nasdaq advanced as a record day for Microsoft and earnings from McDonald's helped offset a fall in energy and healthcare shares. 

 

"It will be something of a hiatus week, given that next week brings the BoJ, Fed and BoE meetings...however there is a heavily back-loaded run of data in the U.S., Japan and Eurozone, and there will be a deluge of US and indeed European and Asian corporate earnings," wrote Marc Ostwald, strategist at ADM Investor Services International. 

 

Global markets are bracing for a slew of data this week including consumer prices data from Japan and some euro zone countries, third quarter U.S. GDP and a number of purchasing managers' index (PMI) data from developed economies. 

 

In currencies, the dollar index was steady at 98.657, not far from 98.813, its highest since Feb. 3 struck on Friday.

 

The U.S. currency received a boost last week as the euro slid after the European Central Bank doused talk it was contemplating tapering its monetary easing.