A pedestrian looks at an electronic quotation mark that shows the numbers on the Nikkei 225 index on September 11, 2020 in Tokyo.
Kazuhiro Nogi | AFP | Getty Images
SINGAPORE – Asia Pacific markets begin the new week with a mixed trading session on Monday following a “big miss” in the US employment report released on Friday.
Futures contracts linked to Nikkei 225 indicated opening gains for the Japanese benchmark index, while the Australian SPI 200 futures indicated a cautious start for the ASX 200.
The widely watched US job report for April was weaker than expected. The report showed that U.S. employers added 266,000 net pay slips last month and the unemployment rate rose to 6.1%.
But Wall Street reacted only slightly to the bad news. Overall, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 2.7% last week, while the S&P 500 was up 1.2%. Despite a 0.9% rally in the last session of the week, the Nasdaq Composite lost 1.5% over the same period.
“A major non-farm payroll mistake was another bad news is good news case for US stocks on Friday. The 266,000 rise would be extremely impressive in normal times, but it shocked the market that almost expected four times that number. “Analysts at the Australian bank ANZ wrote in a morning note.
On Monday, investors will be watching a number of data releases from Australia, including retail sales for March and Q1 and the NAB business confidence survey.
Currencies and oil
The US dollar fell 0.09% against a basket of competitors to hit 90.155 early Monday.
Across the region, the Japanese yen changed hands at $ 108.49 per dollar, while the Australian dollar gained 0.18% against the US dollar to $ 0.7853.
In the oil markets, US crude oil futures rose 0.5% to $ 65.40 a barrel, while the global benchmark Brent index rose 0.5% to $ 68.88 a barrel.
– CNBC’s Thomas Franck contributed to this report.
