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Most Asian stocks rose on Friday ahead of a report on the US labor market, while several major markets including Tokyo and Shanghai were closed for holidays.
Oil prices and US futures were higher.
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The Japanese yen rose slightly against the US dollar amid signs of intensified central bank intervention to limit the dollar's advance.
Financial newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported that estimates showed the government spent an estimated 8 trillion yen (about $50 billion) this week in an attempt to prevent the yen from sliding further against the dollar.
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The weaker yen has helped boost prices of imported goods, a factor behind the Bank of Japan's recent decision to abandon its negative interest rate policy and raise its benchmark interest rate to zero to 0.1% from the long-standing level of 0.1%. He may raise interest rates further, even if his 2% target is not met, Marcel Thiliant of Capital Economics said in a commentary.
“Although the economic case for preventing the yen from sliding is much weaker, the Finance Ministry appears to have responded with a more aggressive round of foreign exchange market interventions this week than it did two years ago,” Thiliant said.
While a weaker yen could be a boon for Japanese companies that earn much of their revenue abroad, big shifts in the foreign exchange market could hurt corporate planning, and a sharply weaker yen also raises the costs of imports of oil and other vital commodities.
The dollar was trading at 153.15 early Friday, down from 153.65 late Thursday. The euro rose to $1.0735 from $1.0727.
Elsewhere in Asia, Hong Kong's Hang Seng jumped 1.7% to 18,518.64, tracking gains on Wall Street. News of new moves by Chinese leaders to stimulate the economy helped drive buying in technology stocks.
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The shares of e-commerce giant Alibaba rose 3.9%, and the shares of its competitor JD.com increased 5%. Baidu advanced by 4.2%.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.6% to 7,629.00 and Seoul's Kospi fell 0.3% to 2,676.63. Taiwan's TAEX index rose 0.5%.
India's Sensex fell 0.9% to 73,952.37.
On Thursday, the S&P 500 rose 0.9% to 5,064.20, a day after a sharp swing when the Federal Reserve said it would likely postpone interest rate cuts but had no plans to raise them. This cut its decline by more than half during the week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.9% to 38,225.66 points, and the Nasdaq Composite Index jumped 1.5% to 15,840.96 points.
The U.S. government on Friday will report on the number of jobs employers added last month, one of the most anticipated economic updates each month.
Economists expect it to show a slowdown in hiring.
Fewer U.S. workers filed for unemployment benefits last week than economists expected, a report Thursday showed. It's the latest sign that the labor market remains strong despite rising interest rates.
A separate, perhaps more disappointing, report noted that growth in the amount of American workers produced per hour worked was weaker at the start of 2024 than economists had expected. Meanwhile, a measure comparing labor costs to productivity rose more than expected in the initial report. This could put upward pressure on inflation.
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Apple shares rose 2.2% ahead of its earnings report, which was released after the end of trading on Thursday.
DoorDash fell 10.3% after reporting a worse-than-expected loss, while Peloton Interactive swung from an early gain to a 2.8% loss after it said it would cut nearly 400 jobs as part of a program to save $200 million in costs annually. It also said its chief executive, Barry McCarthy, would step down. The company's stock fell to a record low last week.
The US economy is in a critical position, where the hope is that it will remain 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 prompted Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to say Wednesday that it will likely take “longer than previously expected” to gain enough confidence about inflation to cut interest rates.
In energy trading, US crude oil 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.
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