Asian shares mostly gain ahead of Friday's US jobs report

Winnipeg Free Press

19 hours ago

TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares were mostly higher Friday ahead of an update on the U.S. job market that will offer insights into how the economy is faring.
U.S. futures edged higher and oil prices fell.
Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index rose 0.5% to 37,730.67, while the Kospi in South Korea jumped 1.5% to 2,812.05.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 0.4% to 23,817.10 and the Shanghai Composite index edged 0.1% higher, to 3,385.91.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was nearly unchanged at 8,536.40.
India's Sensex gained 0.6%.
On Thursday, the S&P 500 fell 0.5% to 5,939.30 for its first drop in four days. After sprinting through May and rallying within a couple good days' worth of gains of its all-time high, the index at the center of many 401(k) accounts has lost momentum.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.3% to 42,319.74, and the Nasdaq composite sank 0.8% to 19,298.45.
The U.S. Labor Department is due to report how many more jobs U.S. employers created than destroyed during May. The expectation on Wall Street is for a slowdown in hiring from April.
A resilient job market has been one of the linchpins that's propped up the U.S. economy, and the worry is that all the uncertainty created by President Donald Trump's on-and-off tariffs could push businesses to freeze their hiring.
A report on Thursday said more U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week than economists expected. The number remains relatively low compared with history, but it still hit its highest level in eight months.
The data came as Procter & Gamble, the giant behind such brands as Pampers diapers and Cascade dish detergent, said it will cut up to 7,000 jobs over the next two years. Its stock fell 1.9%.
The day's heaviest weight on the market was Tesla, which tumbled 14.3%. It's lost nearly 30% of its value so far this year as CEO Elon Musk's relationship with Trump sours amid a disagreement over the president's signature bill of tax cuts and spending. In after-hours trading Tesla gained 2.2%.
Brown-Forman, the company behind Jack Daniel's and Woodford Reserve, dropped 17.9% for its worst day since it began trading in 1972.
Hopes that Trump will lower his tariffs after reaching trade deals with other countries have been among the main reasons the S&P 500 has rallied back so furiously since dropping roughly 20% from its record two months ago. It's now back within 3.3% of its all-time high.
Trump boosted such hopes Thursday after saying he had 'a very good phone call' with China's leader, Xi Jinping, about trade and that 'their respective teams will be meeting shortly at a location to be determined.'
It's an easing of tensions after the world's two largest economies had earlier accused each other of violating the agreement that had paused their stiff tariffs against each other, which threatened to drag the economy into a recession.
Markets took the latest signs of detente with Beijing coolly, given that nothing is assured in Trump's on-and-off rollout of tariffs.
Among Wall Street's winners was MongoDB, which jumped 12.8% after the database company likewise delivered a stronger profit than analysts expected.
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Circle Internet Group, the U.S.-based issuer of one of the most popular cryptocurrencies, surged 168.5% in its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury held steady at 4.40%, up from 4.37% late Wednesday after tumbling from 4.46% the day before.
Yields dropped so sharply on Wednesday as expectations built that the Federal Reserve will need to cut interest rates later this year to prop up an economy potentially weakened by tariffs.
In other dealings early Friday, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 21 cents to $63.16 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, fell 18 cents to $65.16 per barrel.
The U.S. dollar rose to 143.77 Japanese yen from 143.49 yen. The euro fell to $1.1438 from $1.1448.