Asian shares slip away from five-month highs

Sydney — Asian shares lost steam on Tuesday after scaling a five-month high as investors waited to see if Washington and Beijing can clinch a trade deal, while the pound advanced on hopes UK Prime Minister Theresa May will delay a Brexit deadline.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.5% from its highest since mid-September as US and Chinese negotiators work to hammer out a deal that would end a protracted tit-for-tat tariff battle.

President Donald Trump said on Sunday he would delay a tariff hike on $200bn of Chinese imports in the clearest sign yet that both sides were making progress in the talks, but he also sounded a note of caution, saying a deal “could happen fairly soon, or it might not happen at all”.

Tuesday’s losses in Asian stock markets come as JPMorgan analysts urged investors to “curb some of their enthusiasm” over the trade talks, saying the extension to the deadline was a “foregone conclusion”.

“Most assumed this action would occur,” they added. “And it is notable that, one, no new deadline date has been set and, two, there weren’t any formal statements published from either side following the talks in Washington.”

Australian shares faltered 1.3%, weighed by energy stocks as oil prices tumbled overnight.

Chinese shares were in the red, too, with the blue-chip CSI300 slipping over 1% following a strong rally the previous day. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was off 0.6%.

Japan’s Nikkei fell 0.2%, after starting firmer as some selling pressure built ahead of the fiscal year-end.

US stock futures were down too, with E-Minis for the S&P 500 falling 0.4%.

Investors were also wary of weakening estimates for current quarter earnings, with Wall Street on Monday expecting a 0.9% decline in S&P first-quarter earnings per share compared with expectations for 5.3% growth on January 1, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

Overnight, the S&P 500 rose to a near four-month peak while the Dow and the Nasdaq also gained.