Stock market today: Asian shares advance ahead of US jobs report

Asian shares were mostly higher on Friday ahead of a report on the US labor market, while several major markets including Tokyo and Shanghai were closed for the holidays.

Oil prices and US futures were higher.

The Japanese yen strengthened slightly against the US dollar, amid signs of heavy central bank intervention to slow the dollar’s advance.

Financial newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported that estimates show the government spent an estimated 8 trillion yen (about $50 billion) this week to prevent the yen from sliding further against the dollar.

The weaker yen has helped push up prices for imported goods, a factor behind the Bank of Japan’s recent decision to abandon its negative interest rate policy and raise the benchmark interest rate to zero from a longstanding level of minus 0.1%. 0.1%. It could raise rates further, Marcel Thieliant of Capital Economics said in a commentary, even if the 2% target is not met.

“While the economic case for preventing the yen from falling is much weaker, the Treasury Department appears to have responded this week with an even stronger round of currency interventions than two years ago,” Thieliant said.

While a weak yen can be a boon to Japanese companies that earn much of their revenue abroad, significant shifts in the currency market can wreak havoc on business planning, and a sharply weaker yen also increases the cost of importing oil and other essential raw materials.

The dollar was trading at 153.15 early Friday, down from 153.65 late Thursday. The euro rose from $1.0727 to $1.0735.

Elsewhere in Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.7% to 18,518.64, following gains on Wall Street. News of new steps by Chinese leaders to boost the economy helped spur buying in technology stocks.

E-commerce giant Alibaba climbed 3.9% and competitor JD.com rose 5%. Baidu advanced 4.2%.

The Australian S&The P/ASX 200 rose 0.6% to 7,629.00 and the Kospi in Seoul fell 0.3% to 2,676.63. Taiwan’s Taiex rose 0.5%.

India’s Sensex lost 0.9% to 73,952.37.

On Thursday the S&The P500 rose 0.9% to 5,064.20, a day after a sharp swing when the Federal Reserve said it is likely to delay interest rate cuts but has no plans to increase them. That more than halved the week’s decline.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.9% to 38,225.66, and the Nasdaq composite rose 1.5% to 15,840.96.

On Friday, the U.S. government will report on the number of jobs employers added last month, one of the most anticipated economic updates of the month.

Economists expect there will be a slowdown in hiring.

A report on Thursday showed that fewer U.S. workers filed for unemployment benefits last week than economists expected. It is the latest signal that the labor market remains solid despite high interest rates.

A separate, potentially more disappointing report suggested that growth in the amount of U.S. workers producing per hour worked in early 2024 was weaker than economists expected. A measure comparing labor costs to productivity, meanwhile, rose more than expected in the preliminary report. That could put upward pressure on inflation.

Apple climbed 2.2% ahead of its earnings report, which came out after trading ended Thursday.

DoorDash fell 10.3% after reporting a bigger-than-expected loss, while Peloton Interactive swung from an early gain to a 2.8% loss after it said it would cut about 400 jobs as part of a program to cut 200 jobs annually million dollars in cost savings. It also said its CEO, Barry McCarthy, is stepping down. The company’s shares fell to a record low last week.

The US economy is in a tight spot and the hope is that it remains strong enough to stay out of recession, but not so strong that it exacerbates already stalled progress on inflation.

Stubbornly high inflation readings this year led Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to say on Wednesday that it will likely take “longer than previously expected” to build enough confidence about inflation to cut rates.

In energy trading, U.S. benchmark crude rose 17 cents to $79.12 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It lost 5 cents on Thursday.

Brent crude, the international standard, added 18 cents to $83.85 a barrel.