Asian shares advance as investors await US inflation data

BANGKOK (AP) — Asian shares are higher after Wall Street logged modest losses, as investors await key U.S. inflation data. Benchmarks rose across the region, but stayed in a relatively narrow range.

Investors will get closely watched U.S. inflation data on Thursday. The focus is on how it might impact ultra-low interest rates and other market-supporting policies.

“There’s a sense of every man for himself ahead of the U.S. inflation data this evening, a data point that has left markets in limbo and seems to be taking an interminably long time to arrive,” Jeffrey Halley of Oanda said in a report.

The Labor Department’s release of the consumer price index comes shortly before a meeting next week of the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee, which sets policy on interest rates and other measures.

Trading has been relatively constrained this week, with investors parsing any data to judge whether rising inflation will be temporary, as the Federal Reserve thinks, or more permanent.

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 rose 0.3% to 28,958.56 and the Kospi in South Korea picked up 0.3% to 3,224.64. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng added 0.2% to 28,799.15, while the Shanghai Composite index advanced 0.6% to 3,614.41. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.4% to 7,302.50.

On Wednesday, a slide in banks and industrial companies nudged stocks on Wall Street to modest losses after an early gain faded in the last half-hour of trading. Stocks championed by hordes of online retail investors, the “meme” stocks as they have become known, were volatile once again.

The S&P 500 slipped 0.2% to 4,219.55, erasing its meager gain from a day earlier. The benchmark index's modest moves this week have it on track for its first weekly loss in three weeks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gave up 0.4% to 34,447.14,...