* Wall St slips from session highs after Capitol protests
* Asia equities gain on U.S. stimulus hopes, bonds and
dollar sold
* Tencent, Alibaba slip on possible U.S. sanctions threat
By Tom Westbrook and Imani Moise
SINGAPORE/NEW YORK, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Bonds nursed losses
and Asian stock markets rose on Thursday in anticipation of a
big borrowing and big spending Democrat administration driving
growth, following runoff elections that gave the party control
of both houses of U.S. Congress.
U.S. Treasuries suffered their steepest selloff in months
and the S&P 500 index made a record high after Democrat
victories in two Georgia races handed them narrow control of the
Senate and the power to pass their agenda. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan
.MIAPJ0000PUS rose 0.5% to just shy of a record high, led by
jumps of more than 1.5% in South Korea's chipmaker-heavy Kospi
.KS11 and Australia's miner-and-bank heavy ASX 200 .AXJO .
Japan's Nikkei .N225 rose 2% to its highest since 1990.
S&P 500 futures ESc1 rose 0.6% and Nasdaq 100 futures NQc1
rose 0.9% as markets seemed to shake off a late New York session
fade when chaotic protests in Washington unnerved traders. .N
"It's basically a re-flation trade," said Mathan
Somasundaram, head of Sydney-based research firm Deep Data
Analytics, who added that the Democrat sweep was unexpected by
most investors and "changes a lot."
"Even though its a razor-thin margin, it gives Democrats a
two-year window (to pursue their agenda)," he said. "Anything
that benefits from rising prices is going to do well...when you
look at the policy settings they are trying to get through, it's
about printing (money for) Main Street and not Wall Street."
Georgia voters elected the first Black senator in the
state's history, Raphael Warnock, and the Senate's youngest
member, Jon Ossoff. Together with Vice-President Kamala Harris'
tie-breaker vote, the wins allow the Democrats to control the
chamber.
The subsequent bond selloff pushed the yield on benchmark
10-year U.S. Treasuries US10YT=RR over 1% for the first time
since March. It steadied at 1.0422% on Wednesday. US/
The U.S. dollar also sank as the result became clearer
because currency traders reckon that big and growing U.S. trade
and budget deficits will weigh on the greenback. FRX/
The dollar struck an almost three-year low against the euro
EUR= of $1.2349 and hovered near that level on Thursday. It
also fell to multi-year troughs against the Aussie AUD=D3 ,
kiwi NZD=D3 and Swiss franc CHF= .
CAPITOL CHAOS, CHINA CRACKDOWN
The exuberance was tempered by a selloff in tech stocks, as
investors expect the sector to face taxes and regulations, and
by unsettling scenes of protesters storming the Capitol to
disrupt certifying Donald Trump's electoral defeat.
Wall Street indexes eased from session highs as police
evacuated lawmakers and struggled for more than three hours to
clear the Capitol of Trump supporters. "What give us a little bit of a pause is that the economy is
still very fragile and I think it's unlikely that Democrats are
going to have as easy of a time as markets are trying to predict
in passing some of these policies," said Tim Chubb, chief
investment officer at wealth advisor Girard in Pennsylvania.
Congress has since reconvened to resume the election
certification. Shares in Twitter TWTR.K slipped slightly after
hours when the social network said it had temporarily locked
Trump's account for violating the platform's rules. Meanwhile a U.S. crackdown on Chinese companies appears to
be deepening, with sources telling Reuters that the Trump
administration is considering extending investment bans to tech
giants Alibaba 9988.HK , BABA.N and Tencent 0700.HK .
Shares in both fell about 3% in Hong Kong and shares in
three Chinese telecom firms that the New York Stock Exchange has
eventually decided to remove after a week of flip-flopping also
fell heavily. Oil prices hovered near a 10-month high, basking in the
afterglow of a production cut promised by Saudi Arabia. Brent
crude futures LCOc1 were last up 0.5% to $54.60 a barrel and
U.S. crude futures CLc1 rose 0.8% to $51.02 a barrel.
Gold XAU= was steady at $1,916 an ounce and bitcoin
BTC=BTSP firm after making a fresh record high of $37,400.
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