Financial markets in general showed a little more in the way of confidence on Wednesday, with hopes that central banks will move to shore up the flagging global economy.

The European Central Bank is expected this week to cut interest rates to a record low, with the US seen increasingly likely to act too, after the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday cut its estimate for American economic growth.

Investors also gained cheer from data showing US factory orders rose in May for the first time in three months.

So many risk assets managed headway on Wednesday, despite the absence of a lead from US markets, closed for Independence Day.

Three-month high

Shares rose on Asian markets, adding 0.4% in Tokyo, Singapore and Seoul, and 1.1% in Sydney.

And, on agricultural commodity markets, rubber managed gains too.

And as an extra impetus for buyers, Chrysler Group, Ford Motor and General Motors managed US car sales for June above analysts' forecasts, hitting 14.1m units at an annualised rate, seasonally adjusted, according to Autodata.

The data helped rubber to defy a forecast from the Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries of a 4.9% rise in global natural rubber production this year, an estimate that Ker Chung Yang at Phillip Futures warned "may weigh on prices".

Tokyo rubber for December added 2.1% to 256.40 yen a kilogramme, reaching the highest for a benchmark contract in nearly three months.

'Rising demand'

But some other agricultural commodities found greater trouble in setting much of a trend, in the absence of a clear lead from the US.

Rubber, after all is an industrial raw material grown, and largely used, in Asia.

Palm oil found its recovery from June's seven-month lows harder to sustain in the absence of a lead from Chicago, where prices of soybeans, the source of rival soyoil, have been soaring thanks to a US heatwave which is drastically reducing the condition of the American crop.

September palm oil was higher as of 08:45 UK time, but not by much, adding 1 ringgit to 3,125 ringgit a tonne.

Mr Ker noted "rising demand ahead of the Muslim fasting month Ramadan that begins in end-July" as a support for prices, which have gained 10% from a June 14 low.