BANGKOK—World shares were mostly higher Tuesday, led by gains in China after an investment fund said it would step up stock purchases.
Germany’s DAX edged 0.1 percent lower to 16,880.36 and the CAC 40 in Paris was up 0.1 percent at 7,598.26. Britain’s FTSE 100 added 0.4 percent to 7,639.96.
The future for the S&P 500 was flat while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 0.2 percent.
Chinese markets jumped, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng surging 4 percent to 16,133.60 in a rally led by technology shares such as e-commerce giant Alibaba, which gained 7.6 percent and JD.com, which was up 7.8 percent. Online food delivery company Meituan jumped 6.5 percent.
The Shanghai Composite index climbed 3.2 percent to 2,789.49. In China’s smaller main market, the Shenzhen Component index soared 6.2 percent, while the CSI 1000, an exchange-traded fund that often is used to track so-called “snowball derivatives,” investment products that can pay big gains but also can result in exaggerated losses, advanced 7 percent.
The latest salvo in Beijing’s campaign to prop up sagging markets came with a promise by Central Huijin Investment, whose subsidiaries include many Chinese regime-run banks, to expand its purchases of stock index funds.
The fund periodically steps up buying of shares in big regime-owned banks and other companies to counter heavy selling pressure in the Chinese markets. On Monday, benchmarks in Shanghai and the smaller market in Shenzhen bounced between small gains and big losses, while share prices of regime-run banks and other big companies rose.
Elsewhere in Asia, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index fell 0.5 percent to 36,160.66 and the Kospi in South Korea lost 0.6 percent, to 2,576.20.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.6 percent to 7,581.60
In Bangkok, the SET gained 0.9 percent, while India’s Sensex rose 0.6 percent.
On Monday, stocks slipped on Wall Street as data showed the economy remains strong, which could delay interest rate cuts investors are counting on.
The S&P 500 fell 0.3 percent from an all-time high set Friday. The Dow industrials dropped 0.7 percent and the Nasdaq composite edged down by 0.2 percent.
In other trading Tuesday, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 1 cent to $72.77 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international standard, was up 5 cents at $78.04 per barrel.
The dollar rose to 148.71 Japanese yen from 148.68 yen. The euro slipped to $1.0730 from $1.0743.
