Stocks in Asia mostly advance following Wall Street record closing highs; Australia touches more than 10-year highs

The Nikkei 225 in Japan rose 0.28% in morning trade, with shares of index heavyweights Fast Retailing, Softbank Group and Fanuc rising. The Topix index was largely flat.

Nissan Motor saw its stock drop more than 2.5% after Reuters reported, citing Japanese media, that the company was set to slash its earnings outlook for the fiscal year that ended in March.

Mainland Chinese shares also gained in early trade, with the Shanghai composite rising 0.26% and the Shenzhen component adding about 0.23%. The Shenzhen composite also advanced 0.219%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index gained 0.2%.

Meanwhile, Australia’s ASX 200 added 1.06% to touch more than 10-year highs as the sectors mostly advanced.

In South Korea, the Kospi declined 0.13%, with chipmaker SK Hynix seeing its stock decline more than 2%.

“Investor optimism is rising now after subdued volatility over the last few weeks and that has been reflected in another push higher for equity markets. If the trend continues through the week with some even bigger names due to report, especially in the US, then we could see indices break through into new territory,” analysts at Rakuten Securities Australia wrote in a morning note.

Overnight on Wall Street, the S&P 500 added 0.9 percent to close at 2,933.68 — besting its previous record close of 2,930.75. The Nasdaq ended its trading day stateside up 1.3 percent at 8,120.82. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, meanwhile, added 145.34 points to close at 26,656.39 and was 1.1 percent from an all-time high.

Tuesday’s move toward an all-time closing high comes less than six months after a sharp decline in late December, which led the S&P 500 to its worst annual performance since 2008. But stocks quickly turned around as the Federal Reserve reversed course on monetary policy while the tone around U.S.-China trade talks improved.

This is one of the busiest weeks of the corporate earnings season. Once the dust settles, more than 140 S&P 500 companies will have released their calendar first-quarter results.

So far, the results have largely topped expectations. More than 78% of the S&P 500 companies that have reported have surpassed analyst expectations, according to FactSet data.

On the U.S.-China trade front, Washington is set to send a trade delegation to Beijing next week as trade negotiations between the two economic powerhouses continue.

The United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin will head to Beijing for talks that will begin on April 30, the U.S. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. They will meet with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He.

Following those talks, the Chinese vice premier will lead a delegation to Washington for further discussions that begin on May 8.

Meanwhile, oil prices touched nearly six month highs on Tuesday as they continued their ascent after U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration announced on Monday that it will not extend sanctions waivers to countries that import Iranian oil.

Crude prices retraced some of those gains in Asian morning trade on Wednesday, with the international benchmark Brent crude futures contract slipping 0.55% to $74.10 per barrel. U.S. crude futures also fell 0.56% to $65.93 per barrel.

The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was at 97.633 after rising sharply from levels below 97.5 in the previous session.

The Japanese yen traded at 111.94 against the dollar after seeing an earlier high of 111.79 yesterday. The Australian dollar tumbled to $0.7046 following an earlier high of $0.7102 following the release of inflation data Down Under that came in below expectations from a Reuters poll.

— Reuters, along CNBC’s Fred Imbert and Joanna Tan, contributed to this report.