Asian stock markets rise on prospect of US interest rate pause

Singapore. The prospect of an interest rate break in the USA drove the Asian stock markets at the start of the week. In Tokyo, the Nikkei index, which includes 225 stocks, rose by 2.5 percent to 70,038 points on Monday. The broader Topix was 1.2 percent higher at 4,139 points.

However, trading volume was low because the Shanghai Stock Exchange was closed for a holiday. The index of major companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen was also not traded. Trade was also halted in South Korea and parts of Australia.

"Labor market conditions are stable overall, but Friday's downward revisions signal that the U.S. economy lost jobs in two of the nine months this year," said Jose Torres, senior economist at Interactive Brokers. The risk of further job losses means the Fed cannot raise interest rates by another 100 basis points.

This development made the Japanese indices the clear winners of the Asian trading day. Investors are now pricing in just a 22 percent chance of a rate hike this month, down from 64 percent last week. Since there was a lack of company-specific news as well as winners and losers in individual stocks due to the holidays in China, the Asian markets primarily followed the positive guidance from the US stock exchanges.