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Rising crude-oil prices and weaker local currencies helped boost Asian share markets on Tuesday, with Japan's Nikkei standing out as the region's best performer.

The Nikkei Stock Average was up 1.2%, led by exporters amid a weaker yen, with Australia's S&P/ASX 200 rising 0.2% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index reversing early gains to fall 0.3%. Both the Japanese and Hong Kong markets were closed on Monday.

Meanwhile, the Shanghai Composite Index gained 0.3%, building on Monday's 1.5% rise, as Chinese investors returned from a weeklong national holiday.

Risk-on sentiment is returning to Asia, thanks to higher oil prices due to production cuts, as well as recent gains in U.S. markets, said Alex Furber, a senior client services executive at CMC Markets.

"There is going to be general relief as well at the prospect of a [Donald] Trump win receding," Mr. Furber said, following the second televised U.S. presidential debate. Markets are less favorable to Mr. Trump as they dislike the uncertainty of his economic policies, analysts say.

"A fair bit of U.S. trading partners are in Asia" and may feel relieved for now, said Mr. Furber.

On Monday, crude oil prices hit a one-year high in the U.S., after Russian President Vladimir Putin said the country would support the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries' attempt to cut its collective output.

Though crude prices were slightly weaker in Asian trade Tuesday on profit-taking.

China's biggest oil companies listed in Hong Kong got a lift from higher oil prices, with offshore oil producer Cnooc gaining 1.4% and PetroChina adding 1.6%.

Meanwhile, a stronger dollar weighed on Asian currencies, boosting the competitiveness of exports from countries in the region.

The U.S. dollar was 0.3% higher against the Japanese yen and 0.6% stronger against the Korean won in early Asian trade. Meanwhile, the Philippine peso was down about 0.6% against the dollar.

The WSJ Dollar Index, a measure of the U.S. dollar against a basket of 16 currencies, was up 0.2% in Asian trade amid rising expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in December.

Meanwhile, Korea's Kospi was among the region's biggest underperformers Tuesday, dragged lower by Samsung Electronics, which fell 4.9% in morning trade following the company's unprecedented move to halt sales of its flagship smartphone.

The Korean electronics giant halted production and distribution of the Galaxy Note 7, as investigators began probing recent reports of overheating batteries.

The Kospi was down 0.8%, while Taiwan's Taiex fell 0.6%. Many of Taiwan's top firms supply components to Samsung.

Among other Asian currencies, China fixed the yuan's exchange rate 0.1% weaker against the U.S. dollar Tuesday, the second consecutive weaker yuan fixing this week.

The Chinese yuan was guided toward a six-year low against the U.S. dollar on Monday following a weeklong holiday, and after the currency was included in the International Monetary Fund's elite basket of reserve currencies.

Analysts expect further declines in the yuan in the near term amid capital outflow worries.

"The [People's Bank of China] will need to step in to manage market expectations and prevent subsequent global chaos of currency devaluations," Gao Qi, a foreign-exchange strategist at Scotiabank in Singapore, said in a note.

Saumya Vaishampayan, Lucy Craymer, Alison Sider, Jonathan Cheng and Eun-Young Jeong contributed to this article.

Write to Kenan Machado at kenan.machado@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 11, 2016 00:25 ET (04:25 GMT)

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