TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian stocks pulled away from 20-month lows on Wednesday, thanks to a rebound on Wall Street, although investors remained cautious after an October month that saw sharp downturns across global equity markets.
A confluence of factors from Sino-U.S. trade tensions to worries about U.S. corporate earnings to the end of easy money in development economies have spurred volatility in financial markets in the past few weeks.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan added 0.75 percent, but it was still on track to fall roughly 11 percent this month.
The index had dropped to its lowest level since February 2017 on Monday as worries over corporate profits weighed heavily on U.S. equities.
Wall Street’s three stock indexes jumped more than 1 percent on Tuesday, helped by strong gains for chip and transport stocks as investors took advantage of cheaper prices following the steep recent pullback for equities. [.N]
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1 percent and the Shanghai Composite Index climbed 0.75 percent, with the gains coming despite weak factory activity data for this month.
Australian stocks were up 0.3 percent, South Korea’s KOSPI rose 0.1 percent and Japan’s Nikkei advanced 1.3 percent.
“The recent slide in equities had gone to such an extent that it was bound to invite buyers, such as in the Japanese stock market,” said Masahiro Ichikawa, senior strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui Asset Management in Tokyo.
The MSCI AC World index, which includes a few large emerging markets in addition to developed markets, was down 8.5 percent this month and has lost about $4 trillion in value. The narrower MSCI World Index
