Asian stocks open higher as yuan pulls-off

Asian stocks opened on green today after the People's Bank of China set the exchange rate for yuan at 7 per dollar mark for the first time since 2008, which the market saw as a sign of the Chinese government attempts to limit the recent yuan's sharp drop, which has also relatively eased market's concerns over the the trade and currency wars.

Investors are anticipating today the Chinese trade balance index reading for the last month, to determine the size of the trade war impacts on the chinese economy, amid market's expectation for the index to reflect the surplus declining and exports and imports falling compared to june.

Bearing in mind that the US has criticized after the yuan's sharp drop below the 7 per dollar mark, which led the US to designate China as a currency manipulator to take competitive advantages in export at the expense of the US, while the People's Bank of China denied these allegations and the currency war.

This comes after the recent escalation of the trade war, as the Chinese Commerce Ministry ordered state-owned companies to stop purchasing US agricultural products in response to US President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to impose 10% tariffs on Chinese to the US worth $300 billion. The decision is supposed to be effective starting from September 1st,

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce stated in the beginning of this week that tariffs on US agricultural products purchased after Aug. 3rd would not be excluded. while the president of the People's Bank of China, Yi Gang also said that China would not manipulate its currency to further escalate the trade war with the US.

The Japanese stocks indices opened higher today, as Topix rose by 0.15% (2.18 points) to 1,502.11, and Nikkei 225 rose by 0.59% (120.16 points) to 20,636.72.

Chinese stocks also saw gains, with CSI 300 rising by 0.84% ​​(30.59 points) to 3,652.02, and the Shanghai Composite rose by 0.65% (17.91 points) to 2,786.59.