By Lisa Twaronite
TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares tottered on Wednesday, taking cues from Wall Street's losses and pressured by a continued selloff in oil as investors awaited consumer price data from China this session.
Faced with concerns about a global slowdown, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said on Wednesday that it will ease its monetary policy for the second time this year by slowing the pace of the Singapore dollar's appreciation.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down 0.3 percent, while Japan's Nikkei stock index shed 1.1 percent.
On Wall Street on Tuesday, stocks slipped, with the S&P 500 touching a fresh seven-week high before ending solidly down. S&P 500 e-mini futures edged down about 0.1 percent in Asian trading.
China's consumer price index will be released later in the session, and could be a major driver of trade because of what it could portend for People's Bank of China policy, said Evan Lucas, market strategist at IG in Melbourne.
"China remains a source of market debate, the bears see a hard landing as inevitable, the bulls continue to see bright spots here and there, and have an unrelenting belief that the PBOC will be the shining white knight riding in with a rate slashing sword to save the day," Lucas wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday.
The consensus estimate calls for CPI to ease to 1.8 percent in September from 2.0 percent in August CNCPI=ECI.
Crude oil prices remained under pressure after the International Energy Agency rekindled fears that the market would remain over-supplied for at least another year despite falls in output from non-OPEC producers.
Brent slumped 0.2 percent to $49.16 per barrel, after skidding 1.24 percent in the previous session, while U.S. crude edged down about 0.1 percent to $46.62 per barrel after losing 0.9 percent overnight.
A weaker dollar did not give much help to commodities prices.
The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six peers, was down about 0.1 percent on Wednesday at 94.707, after falling as low as 94.539 on Tuesday, its lowest since Sept 18.
The dollar was slightly lower against the yen at 119.72 yen, while the euro added about 0.1 percent to buy $1.1386 after rising to a 3 1/2-week high of $1.1411 overnight.
(This story corrects paragraph 10 to say weaker dollar did not help commodities prices, instead of they "weighed" on prices)