Stocks in Asia were mixed overnight, with the Nikkei (^N225) flat on the day in Japan as Sanae Takaichi became the new prime minister yesterday after winning a parliamentary vote.
On monetary policy, she said: “I believe the BOJ should retain discretion over the tools of monetary policy”, and that she did not see a need to review the 2013 accord between the Bank of Japan and the government.
Against that backdrop, the yen weakened 0.78% against the US dollar, making it the weakest-performing G10 currency, although has stabilised again this morning.
Meanwhile, the Hang Seng (^HSI) fell 0.9% in Hong Kong and the Shanghai Composite (000001.SS) was 0.1% down by the end of the session.
In South Korea, the Kospi (^KS11) added 1.6% on the day.
Across the pond on Wall Street, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) ended flat, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq (^IXIC) was 0.2% higher. The Dow Jones (^DJI) also gained 0.5%.
It comes as the US government shutdown is entering day 22, which now makes it the second-longest shutdown, behind the 2018-19 shutdown that lasted for 35 days.
Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on Tuesday that Republican lawmakers were “hopeful that this will be the week we break out of this”, but there’s still no obvious sign of a compromise emerging between Republicans and Democrats.
The Polymarket odds for the end of the shutdown continued to drift into the distance, with the chances of the shutdown lasting beyond 16 November up from 29% this time yesterday to 40% now.