Stocks in Asia Pacific were set for a mixed start following Thursday’s drop that saw shares in China plunging more than 4%.
Futures pointed to a mixed open for stocks in Japan. The Nikkei futures contract in Chicago was at 22,810 while its counterpart in Osaka was at 22,750. That compared against the Nikkei 225’s last close at 22,770.36.
Shares in Australia were poised to slip at the open, with the SPI futures contract at 5,990, as compared to the S&P/ASX 200’s last close at 6,010.90.
The overall tone is expected to be “cautious” following yesterday’s sharp fall in Chinese stocks along with a “miss” in U.S. jobless claims, Tapas Strickland, director of economics at National Bank of Australia, wrote in a note.
The initial jobless claims figure stateside came in at 1.3 million for the week ending July 11, the Labor Department said Thursday. That compared against expectations of 1.25 million by economists polled by Dow Jones.
Meanwhile, Singapore’s trade data for June is expected to be released around 8:30 a.m. HK/SIN on Friday. The country’s latest gross domestic product estimate, released earlier this week, came in worse than analysts’ forecast and showed the nation’s economy entering a technical recession.
Overnight stateside, the Dow Jones Industrial Average snapped a four-day winning streak as it fell 135.39 points to close at 26,734.71. The S&P 500 slid 0.3% to end its trading day at 3,215.57 while the Nasdaq Composite pulled back 0.7% to close at 10,473.83.
The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was at 96.346 following its decline from levels above 96.4 seen earlier in the trading week.
The Japanese yen traded at 107.31 per dollar, in a turbulent trading week that has seen the currency going from levels around 107.4 to below 106.8 against the greenback. The Australian dollar changed hands at $0.6972 after seeing levels around $0.7 yesterday.
