Asian Market Update:

Asian Market Update: News that in the U.S. the formal transition process to President elect Biden was finally triggered helped to underpin sentiment overnight, although Bloomberg reported that senior Trump administration officials are still pushing for new hard line measures against Beijing, which weighed on China bourses. Wall Street had closed higher yesterday and Japan bourses lifted in catch up trade after returning from yesterday's holiday, but while the Nikkei jumped 2.5%, Hang Seng and CSI 300 traded narrowly mixed and as of 6:18GMT were up 0.1% and down 0.7% respectively. Australia's ASX gained 1.3%, after RBA's Debelle warned against ending stimulus too early. BoJ's Kuroda said the central bank will take additional easing steps if the impact of virus developments becomes more severe. Treasury yields have lifted 0.8 bp to 0.86%, and the 10-year JGB yield is up 1.3 bp at 0.019%. In FX markets the dollar weakened and USD-JPY fell back to 104.41, although the yen was lower against most other currencies. NZD meanwhile rallied as local 10-year rates jumped more than 10% against the background of a proposal that the RBNZ starts targeting house prices.