Oil prices fell.
Wall Street's benchmark S&P 500 index rose 0.9% on Monday after U.S. central banks announced measures to help ease strains on the financial system, including lending more dollars if necessary.
The collapse of two U.S. banks and the takeover of troubled Credit Suisse have heightened fears that other lenders might crack under the strain of rate hikes to cool economic activity and inflation that is near multi-decade highs.
The Fed is expected to go ahead with another rate hike Wednesday, but traders think it might be held to 0.25 percentage points, down from the 0.5 points previously expected.
Is the Federal Reserve going to hike rates in the face of a banking crisis? Clifford Bennett of ACY Securities said in a report. There are still stresses in the banking system that will only grow with rate hikes. The Shanghai Composite Index gained by 0.4% to 3,246 on the back of a 0.4% increase in the Shanghai Composite Index. 88 and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong increased by 0.9% to 19,175. The price of the Kospi in Seoul went up 0.4% to 2,387. 52 and Sydney's S&P-ASX 200 surged 0.8% to 6,955. The S&P 500 rose to 3,951 on Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial Average increased by 1.2% to 32,244. The Nasdaq composite added 0.4% to 11,675. Swiss regulators arranged Sunday for UBS to acquire rival Credit Suisse for almost $3.25 billion.
Credit Suisse had been battling a series of problems for years, but they came to a head last week when its stock price fell to a record low.
In the United States, attention has been focused on smaller and mid-sized banks.
The surge in the Fed's benchmark lending rate to a range of 4.5% to 4.75%, up from close to zero at the beginning of last year, has caused prices of bonds and other assets on banks' books to fall, raising concerns about their financial health.
The First Republic Bank has been at the center of investor interest in the hunt for the industry's next victim. Its shares fell 47.1% after S&P Global Ratings cut its credit rating for the second time in a week.
S&P said it could lower the rating even further despite a group of the biggest U.S. banks announcing last week they would deposit $30 billion in a sign of faith in First Republic.
New York Community Bancorp jumped 31.7% after it agreed to buy much of Signature Bank in a $2.7 billion deal. The industry's third largest failure was the Signature Bank earlier this month.
The benchmark U.S. crude lost 56 cents to $67.26 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract went up 90 cents to $67.64 on Monday. Brent crude, the price basis for international oil trading, declined by 59 cents to $73.20 per barrel in London. The dollar rose to 131.39 yen from Monday's 131.32 yen. The euro fell to $1.0713 from $1.0724.