TOKYO: Asian stocks eked out gains but lacked clear direction on Monday after Wall Street's sluggish performance late last week, while the dollar hit a near nine-month high as comments from a Federal Reserve official boosted bets of a rate hike by year-end.Spreadbetters expected Britain's FTSE , Germany's DAX and France's CAC to open slightly higher.MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan inched up 0.2 per cent.South Korea's Kospi gained 0.4 per cent. Australian stocks lost 0.5 per cent, hurt by a decline in energy shares.Japan's Nikkei moved in a tight range and was last up 0.2 per cent. The euro slipped 0.2 per cent to $1.0869 after falling on Friday to $1.0859, its lowest since March 10.The Australian dollar was steady at $0.7614.The offshore Chinese yuan hit a new six-year low against a broadly stronger dollar. "The PBOC is seen strategically managing the yuan's weakness," said Jeong My-young, Samsung Futures research head in Seoul, referring to the People's Bank of China Crude oil prices slipped on concerns supply will outweigh demand, with US crude down 0.6 per cent at $50.55 a barrel.The contracts had risen about 0.8 per cent on Friday on hopes that Russia and OPEC would reach a price agreement, but worries of oversupply have been a persistent drag on the market.But oil fell Monday after Iraq said it wanted to be exempt from any deal by OPEC to cut production. Latest data also showed that US oil rig count posted the first double-digit rise since August, weighing on the market.Brent crude was down 0.5 per cent at $51.54 a barrel.

Source: Economic Times October 24, 2016 06:11 UTC