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Asia markets traded mixed on Tuesday, with markets in Japan and Australia seeing losses after a mixed finish on Wall Street overnight.

The Japanese Nikkei 225 was off 0.82 percent, while the Topix fell 0.77 percent. Across the Korean Strait, the Kospi was higher by 0.41 percent.

Australia's ASX 200 retraced some of the early losses, but was still down 0.49 percent, after being closed for the Easter holiday on Friday and Monday.

Down Under, the financials subindex dropped 1.37 percent, with ANZ down 2 percent, Commonwealth Bank of Australia down 1.38 percent, Westpac off by 1.65 percent and NAB down 0.99 percent.

That followed ANZ's warning last week that it would see higher bad debt charges than previously expected on its exposure to the resources sector, which spurred concerns that other banks faced similar issues. Westpac has also indicated its bad debts may rise.

Evan Lucas, a market strategist at IG, said in a note Monday that "resource and energy represent approximately 1.5 percent of total bank exposures," for Australia's so-called Big Four banks. He noted NAB, Westpac and ANZ are all due to report fiscal first half earnings at the end of April or beginning of May.

"Expectations would be for NAB to join Westpac and ANZ in 'confessing,' its provisioning for bad and doubtful debt (BDD) will have to increase based on current information from resource firms," he noted.

In the currency market, the dollar/yen pair was at 113.39 as of 8:14 a.m. HK/SIN time. Major Japanese exporters were mostly lower, withToyota off 0.92 percent, Nissan down 1.68 percent and Honda lower by 0.45 percent.

The Australian dollar traded at USD 0.7550 against the greenback.

Oil prices retreated slightly during Asian hours, with US crude futures down by 0.18 percent at USD 39.32 a barrel.

Energy plays were mixed, with Santos adding 0.5 percent, Oil Search up 1.04 percent and Woodside Petroleum higher by 0.89 percent. Japan's Inpex was lower 0.95 percent, while Fuji Oil

fell 0.71 percent and Japan Petroleum down 0.2 percent.

In Japan, data showed household spending rose 1.2 percent on-year in February The country's seasonally adjusted jobless rate for February came in at 3.3 percent, slightly above the 3.2 percent forecast in a Reuters poll.

Overnight, US indexes were mixed, with the Dow Jones industrial average up 0.11 percent, the S&P 500 up 0.05 percent and the Nasdaq composite down 0.14 percent.

First Published:Mar 29, 2016 7:43 AM IST