However, the region’s biggest stock markets were outliers: Japan’s Nikkei rebounded sharply from losses in the previous session as strong earnings lifted the steel sector, and mainland Chinese blue chips jumped, showing little interest in data that revealed an unexpected decline in imports last month and slowing exports.
Every U.S. economic indicator has taken on added importance after Fed Chair Jerome Powell signaled last week that the policy path will depend on incoming data.
And there are several other reasons that investor attention is squarely on the U.S., with the debt ceiling tussle deadlocked and banking sector troubles simmering.
Lenders got a bit of respite overnight, after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said regulators stand ready to mobilize the same tools used in previous bank rescues.
The Fed’s quarterly Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (‘SLOOS’) also buoyed the mood, showing tighter lending conditions but no impending credit crunch. Still, the proviso is that the results missed the latest turmoil around First Republic and PacWest.
Yellen also had a warning that failure to lift the debt limit would cause a huge hit to the U.S. economy and weaken the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, reiterating that the government could be out of cash by June 1.
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/45VBV2HLUJOF7NWNRIGT6ESZLE.jpg "US uncertainty feeds caution in Asia 40")
