Asian markets reversed course Wednesday afternoon, giving back their early gains as Chinese mainland markets dropped sharply.
The Shanghai composite was down 2.55 percent, and the Shenzhen composite lost 3.39 percent as of 12:15 p.m. HK/SIN time. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index dropped 1.11 percent.
Japan's Nikkei kept its 0.3 percent gain thanks to the recent pullback in the yen but MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan dropped 0.5 percent.
The Korean Kospi gave up its morning gains to trade flat while Australia's ASX 200 added 0.32 percent, led by a 2.09 percent gain in the materials sub-index.
Oil prices fell again on news Kuwaiti oil workers ended a three-day strike, leaving markets uncertain of which direction to take. The drop in oil reversed much of Tuesday's sharp gains with Brent crude (LCOc1) shedding 83 cents to $43.20 a barrel and U.S. crude oil (CLc1) sinking $1.02 to $40.11.
Wall Street Up
On Wall Street, the Dow ended with gains of 0.27 percent on Tuesday while the S&P 500 rose 0.31 percent to close above 2100 for the first time in 2016; the Nasdaq eased 0.4 percent.
The dollar index, which measures the dollar against a basket of currencies, closed the overnight session at 93.976. During Asian hours on Wednesday, the index pared some losses to trade up 94.093.
According to Rodrigo Catril, a currency strategist with the National Australia Bank, "Softer U.S. housing data boosted the case for a lower-for-longer Fed, weakening the big dollar along the way."