Shares in Asia gain as data points to easier policy in Australia

Investing.com - Asian shares were mostly higher on Tuesday with Australia gaining on prospects for a rate cut at the April 7 meeting and Tokyo on a weaker yen.

The S&P/ASX 200 rose 1.09%, while the Nikkei 225 was flat near the lunch break after rising in morning trade and the Shanghai composite rose 0.49%.

In Australia, February private sector credit reported from the central bank rose 0.5%, matching expectations. Housing loans rose 0.5% month-on-month.

The private sector credit data show low interest rates are having the desired effect on business and housing loans, but the effect on other personal credit remains muted.

Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has delayed Tuesday's release of February wages data at least for a few days to fix an error found in the statistical revision of the most recent and historical data, a ministry official said.

"We found a mismatch between the indexes and their year-on-year changes when we tried to smooth out the gap in data between the new sample of surveyed firms and the previous one," he said. "We are still looking into what caused it - whether it was a human error or a computer program glitch."

The ministry has not set the new release date for preliminary February and revised January wages data, which were originally scheduled for release at 1030 JST (0130 GMT) Tuesday, but the delay will not affect the release of revised February data on April 17 and preliminary March data on May 1, said the official.

Overnight, stocks on the U.S. equities markets soared on Monday, amid a stronger dollar, the possibility of expanded quantitative easing in China and a flurry of merger and acquisition activity.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 Composite Index each surged more than 1.20%, marking the first two-day winning streak for both in more than a month. The NASDAQ Composite Index posted strong gains, as well, rising more than 1% on the penultimate day of trading in March.

The Dow hovered near the 18,000 level late on Monday, before falling back slightly to 17,976.31. Still, the Dow gained 263.65 points or 1.49% on a bullish day of trading. The strong rally comes in the face of a rocky month, where the index dropped into negative territory for 2015.

U.S. markets also rose broadly ahead of Friday's highly anticipated U.S. jobs report. Last month, unemployment for February fell to a rate of 5.5% in a better than expected report.

In a report, the U.S. National Association of Realtors said pending home sales rose 3.1% last month, easily surpassing expectations for a 0.4% gain. Pending home sales rose by 1.2% in January, whose figure was revised down from a previously reported gain of 1.7%.

The data came after the U.S. Commerce Department said that personal spending inched up 0.1% last month, below expectations for a gain of 0.2%. Personal spending dropped 0.2% in January.

The report also showed personal income rose 0.4% in February, above forecasts for a 0.3% increase and after gaining 0.4% in January.

On Friday, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said in a speech on Friday that a rate hike may be warranted later this year, but added that weakening inflation pressures could force the Fed to delay.

In China, stocks on the Shanghai Composite Index Monday soared 95.47 points or 2.59% to 3,786.57 after the People's Bank of China governor Zhou Xiaochuan remarked that there might be room in the Chinese economy for additional monetary easing.