Asia markets rise in muted session as most markets close for holiday

Tokyo and Seoul stocks traded higher in a quiet session on Friday, as markets in Asia-Pacific are closed due to a holiday.

The Nikkei in Japan gained 0.4%, and the Topix 0.45%. The Kospi rose by 0.74% in South Korea and the Kosdaq gained 0.55%.

Australia, Hong Kong and mainland China are closed.

Investors will be looking forward to Friday's nonfarm payroll report, which will determine the direction of the Federal Reserve. This report follows the ADP report from this week, which showed that U.S. private pay grew less in March than was expected. This week, a Labor Department report showed that the number of positions available fell below 10,000,000 in February for nearly two years. The number of job cuts has also increased by nearly fivefold this year compared to a year earlier.

Stocks on Wall Street ended higher Thursday, boosted by technology. The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.76%, as Alphabet, the parent company of Google, and Microsoft surged. The S&P 500 gained 0.36%, after paring its earlier losses. It was the first week since four that it had a loss. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average grew.

1 Minute Ago

Samsung Electronics' operating profit falls 96% in Q1

Samsung Electronics' latest earnings guidance, released on Friday, estimated that its first-quarter operating profits would likely fall to 600 billion won (455 millions dollars).

This is a 95.7% drop from the operating profit of 14,12 trillion won that was reported for the same quarter in 2020.

Samsung's release stated that revenue is expected to be down nearly 20% from last year's total of 63 trillion won.

Samsung Electronics shares soared 3.2% in the opening hours following the company's estimates.

Jihye Le

8 Hours Ago

Bullard believes inflation will be sticky

James Bullard, the St. Louis Federal Reserve president, said on Thursday that he does not expect inflationary pressures to go away anytime soon.

Bullard, according to Reuters, said that we have a long way to go. "I think inflation will be sticky in the future. It's going be difficult to bring inflation down to the 2% goal. So, we're going to need to keep up pressure on inflation to ensure it falls," he added.

The Fed will meet next month. Traders have priced in a 50-50 chance that another rate increase is likely.

12 Hours Ago

Earnings expected to decline by the most since Q3 2020

Next week, the first quarter earnings season will begin with major banks like JPMorgan and Citigroup. Goldman Sachs says that the consensus expectation is for S&P 500 earnings per share to decline by 7% over the past year. This would be the biggest drop since the third quarter 2020. The bank also said that it will be a "significant decline" from the 1% drop in the previous quarter.

-- Yun Li