Investing.com - Asian shares held weaker on Wednesday with mixed regional data weighing along with uncertainty on U.S. monetary policy.
The Shanghai Composite Index was last down 0.88%, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index edged down 0.48% at 21,226.32.
The yuan rose against the dollar Wednesday after the People's Bank of China set the fixing stronger at 6.5593 compared with Tuesday's midpoint of 6.5618.
The S&P/ASX fell 0.13%, while the Nikkei 225 was down 0.33%.
In China, a trade balance surplus of $49.98 billion was just shy of the expected $50 billion for May on imports eased 0.4%, less than the 6.0% drop seen and exports that fell 4.1%, more than the expected decline of 3.6% year-on-year.
Earlier in Japan, the adjusted current account showed a surplus of Y1.63 trillion yen, narrower than the surplus of ¥2.04 trillion seen.
GDP for the first quarter in Japan met the 1.9% gain seen year-on-year as well as the 0.5% pace quarter-on-quarter.
In Australia home loans for April rose 1.7%, below the 2.5% increase expected month-on-month, while housing finance dropped 5.0%, compared with a 1.5% gain posted in April.
Overnight, U.S. stocks remained near multi-month highs despite a late pullback on Tuesday, as comments from Janet Yellen triggered a relief rally of sorts, briefly pushing the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 18,000 for the first time in more than a month.
Investors on Wall Street continued to digest Yellen's closely-watched speech from the previous session when the chair of the Federal Reserve outlined a wide range of factors contributing to the extreme uncertainty in the global economy at large. At the same time, many economists struggled to characterize the tone of Yellen's speech, helping slightly bolster investor sentiment.
The Dow added 17.95 or 0.10% to 17,938.28, while the S&P 500 Composite index gained 2.72 or 0.13% to 2,112.13, lingering near 7-month highs from Monday's session. The NASDAQ Composite index, meanwhile, fell 6.96 or 0.14% to 4,961.75, as biotech stocks weighed.
On the S&P 500, seven of 10 sectors closed in the green as stocks in the Energy and Telecom sector led.