Most major Asian bourses were down on Monday led by Singapore and Japan stocks even as Chinese stocks rallied on optimism upside pressure on yuan will prompt further rate cuts by the People's Bank of China.
The STI and Nikkei 225 indices ended more than 1% while Malaysian and Indonesian benchmark indices were down 0.2% and 0.35% respectively.
The Shanghai Composite index ended the first day of the week 2.05% higher tracking which India's Sensex rallied more than 0.7% as at 2pm local time.
Concerns ahead of Thursday's Singapore Budget weighed on sentiment in STI, some traders said.
Analysts said they expect policymakers across the globe may continue to adopt risk supportive measures helping markets for the time being, but in the long run, fundamentals will weaken.
"Recent (stimulus measures) by the European Central Bank, Bank of Japan and the Fed will support the risk-asset market rally a bit longer, The rallies may even break out of the downtrend they have been trading within in recent months," according to Mr Lim Say Boon, chief investment officer, DBS Bank, as quoted in a Straits Times article.
Most of the Asian currencies are trading at multi-month highs showing demand for emerging market assets. The Singapore dollar had rallied to 1.3479/US dollar on Friday, its strongest since July last year, before easing to 1.3621 by Monday.
The Chinese yuan fetched a three-month high of 6.4603 on Friday before slipping to 6.4857.
A Reuters article had quoted some China experts saying Fed's renewed caution would encourage Beijing to pursue with its own stimulus measures, such as an interest rate cut, to boost the economy.
"We see this rally continuing until the second quarter with property materials, internet and industrials sectors in demand," CLSA's Cheung said pointing to relatively cheap valuations according to Francis Cheung, China strategist at brokerage CLSA.
