July 14 (Reuters) - Australian shares rose on Wednesday as miners and energy stocks advanced, while a slump in buy-now-pay-later giant Afterpay Ltd and other technology stocks capped gains.
In New Zealand, investors await the country's monetary policy review due later in the day. The central bank is expected to leave policy unchanged, according to a Reuters poll.
The S&P/ASX 200 index was up 0.4% at 7,362 points by 0038 GMT, after it closed relatively flat on Tuesday.
Elsewhere, Japan's Nikkei was down 0.3% and S&P 500 E-minis futures were flat.
Miners rose 0.7% and were among the best performers on the index, benefiting from an overnight jump in Chinese iron ore futures.
Global miner BHP Group added 0.6% while lithium-boron supplier ioneer Ltd rose 2.5%.
Gold stocks also strengthened, with Newcrest Mining Ltd adding 0.6%.
Energy stocks were among the top percentage gainers, tracking an overnight jump in oil prices, with sector heavyweights Woodside Petroleum and Santos gaining 1% and 1.4%, respectively.
Technology stocks slumped as much as 3% to hit a near one-month low, weighed down by a 9.6% fall in Afterpay Ltd .
Buy-now-pay-later firms including Zip Co and Sezzle Inc also dropped more than 9% after Bloomberg News reported that Apple Inc was planning to launch a service that will allow users to repay Apple Pay purchases in instalments.
Meanwhile, looming prospects of a lockdown extension in Sydney persist as authorities attempt to douse an outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant.
New Zealand's benchmark S&P/NZX 50 index was down 0.2% at 12,760.69, weighed down by losses in healthcare and real estate stocks.
In its monetary policy review due later in the day, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand is expected to hold cash rate at a record low of 0.25%, a Reuters poll showed, where it has been since a pandemic-driven cut in March last year.
(Reporting by Harish Sridharan in Bengaluru; editing by Vinay Dwivedi)
