Asian equities are higher for the most part, with the risk mood seeing a more positive tilt ahead of European trading today. US stimulus hopes helped to feed some optimism into the market but even as that was quashed, it didn’t dent sentiment on the day.

The Hang Seng is up 0.9% while the Shanghai Composite is bucking the trend and trading down by 0.6% going into the closing stages.

Elsewhere, S&P 500 futures are up by 0.2% and 10-year Treasury yields are up 1.7 bps to 0.934% as we look towards the session ahead.

In the major currencies space, the dollar and yen are the weaker performers with the aussie and kiwi leading gains with AUD/USD near 0.7450 currently.