Asia-Pacific markets opened higher on Tuesday, following gains on Wall Street that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average reach a record close amid a strong start to the earnings season.

Investors in Asia will asses trade data out of Japan in the morning and job numbers out of Australia.

Japan's Nikkei 225slipped 0.6%, while the broad-based Topix was little changed.

Japan's exports fell 1.7% in September compared to the same period last year, surprising economists polled by Reuters who expected a 0.5% growth rate. It's the first time that exports contracted this year and was down sharply from a revised growth rate of 5.5% in August.

September's import growth came in at 2.1% also missing expectations of economists who expected growth of 3.2%. The figure was down from August's growth of 2.3%.

Hong Kong Hang Seng index

 futures were at 20,482, higher than the HSI's last close of 20,286.85 Cay)

Source: CNBC