Updated on
Summary Asian stocks edged up on Friday, as investors chased value picks after recent sharp volatility.
Concerns over the European crisis may continue to fuel buying into safe havens like gold and government bonds.Wall Street rose 4 percent overnight on high trading volume, with relatively low valuations and short-term oversold conditions attracting buyers, though a slide in U.S. stock futures in early Asian trade kept the regions climb modest.Intraday volatility across financial markets has spiked over the past few weeks, with rumours flying about the health of European banks, questions mounting about the stability of funding markets and authorities struggling to solve a crisis of confidence in Europe.A European regulator ban on short-selling in four countries financial stocks would take effect on Friday, a coordinated attempt to ease panic whose effectiveness was immediately called into question by market participants.Japans Nikkei share average rose 0.2 percent, boosted by a 4.7 percent jump in Canon Inc shares, which were propelled by a stock buyback plan.The rebound is a little lukewarm as investors want to lighten their positions and take profits ahead of the weekend after a very turbulent week, said Mitsuo Shimizu, deputy general manager at Cosmo Securities in Tokyo.The MSCI index of Asia Pacific stocks outside Japan was up 1.3 percent on the day but still looking at a decline of around 3 percent on the week, in line with the MSCI world stock index.The benchmarks 14-day RSI, a measure of momentum that is used to indicate overbought or oversold conditions, was at 30.6, poised to snap a six-session string of readings below 30 -- the oversold threshold. That is the longest string of days below 30 since May 2010.Even as equity prices dropped in the past few weeks, some fund managers in Asia with long-term horizons have been slowly shifting their portfolios by buying more cyclical stocks, which are more sensitive to changes in business cycles, and reducing exposure to so-called defensive sectors.
