Stocks in Asia mostly trade higher after earlier losses this week

Mainland Chinese shares advanced in early trade, with the Shanghai composite adding 0.78% and the Shenzhen component rising 1.17%. The Shenzhen composite also gained 0.897%.

Over in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index added 0.47%.

The Nikkei 225 in Japan slipped around 0.1% in morning trade, as shares of index heavyweight Fast Retailing fell about 1%. The Topix index also declined fractionally.

Japanese automaker Nissan Motor saw its shares plummet more than 6% after the company posted 2018 fiscal earnings that were their lowest level in 11 years.

In South Korea, the Kospi recovered from its earlier slip, rising 0.6% as shares of LG Chem jumped more than 2%.

Over in Australia, the ASX 200 rose 0.31% as the sectors mostly traded higher.

Meanwhile, growth in China’s industrial output for April came in below forecasts, according to Reuters. The industrial production increased 5.4% year-on-year, as compared to expectations of a 6.5% year-on-year increase by analysts in a Reuters poll.

In overnight markets stateside, stocks saw a bounce as they recovered partially from Monday’s sharp losses. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 207.06 points to close at 25,532.05 — its best day since April 12. The S&P 500 added 0.8% to finish its trading day at 2,834.41, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 1.1% to close at 7,734.49.

On Monday, the Dow and S&P 500 fell 617 points and 2.4%, respectively, their worst performances since early January. The Nasdaq dropped 3.4%, its biggest one-day loss of 2019.

Those moves came after China announced on Monday its plans to raise tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S. imports, starting on June 1. Beijing’s move came after Washington last week increased tariffs from 10% to 25% on a bulk of Chinese imports.

“We argued over the course of the last few weeks that … one of the things that concerned us about this recent escalation was that it felt to us as if both (Donald) Trump and Xi Jinping were perhaps, overconfident about their positions, ” Eric Robertson, head of global macro strategy and foreign exchange research at Standard Chartered Bank, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday.

“I think both of them may have overestimated how much resilience their economic sentiment and market sentiment might have had … if they decided to take a hard line,” Robertson said. “That’s what I find troubling at the moment.”

The People’s Bank of China set its official yuan midpoint at 6.8649 against the greenback on Wednesday — its weakest in more than four months, according to Reuters.

The flare-up in trade tensions has renewed global market concerns over how much China will allow the yuan to weaken to offset heavier pressure on its exporters.

The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was at 97.528 after rising from levels below 97.4 yesterday.

The Japanese yen traded at 109.62 against the dollar after weakening from levels below 109.5 in the previous session, while the Australian dollar changed hands at $0.6930 after trading in a range between $0.693 and $0.696 yesterday.

Oil prices fell in the morning of Asian trading hours, with the international benchmark Brent crude futures contract declining fractionally to $71.19 per barrel and U.S. crude futures slipping 0.39% to $61.54 per barrel.

— CNBC’s Fred Imbert and Kate Rooney, as well as Reuters, contributed to this report.