By Gregor Stuart Hunter
SINGAPORE, July 3 (Reuters) – Stocks rose during the Asian trading session on Friday after a lukewarm U.S. jobs report poured cold water on the prospect of an imminent rate hike from the Federal Reserve and regional activity gauges pointed to an economic expansion during June.
After a shaky start, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 2.2% following two consecutive days of declines.
South Korea’s Kospi swung between gains and losses, before surging more than 6% as buyers pounced on battered chipmaker stocks. S&P 500 e-mini futures rose 0.4%, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 reversed early losses to trade 1.2% higher.
Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) data released on Friday indicated increased activity across the region.
Japan’s services sector returned to expansion in June after stalling the previous month, while China’s services activity expanded at a slightly slower pace but overseas demand rose at the fastest rate in 20 months.
“The PMIs remain healthy by recent standards and still imply stronger economic momentum across Q2 as a whole,” analysts from Capital Economics said of the Chinese data.
U.S. LABOUR MARKET COOLING
U.S. job growth slowed sharply in June and payroll gains for the prior two months were revised lower, according to data released on Thursday, pointing to a cooling labour market. The unemployment rate dropped to 4.2% last month from 4.3% in May as workers left the labour force, pushing the participation rate to the lowest level in more than five years.
“The figures challenged the narrative that the Fed remains on track to hike in the second half of this year,” Westpac analysts wrote in a research report.
The tepid jobs data doused traders’ expectations of an imminent rate hike and raised the odds that the Fed will keep rates on hold until October.
Fed funds futures are pricing an implied 46.8% probability that the U.S. central bank will keep rates steady at its meeting on September 15 to 16, compared to a 35.8% chance a day earlier, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool.
Overnight, stocks on Wall Street were a mixed bag as the S&P 500 was flat and the Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.8%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose to a record close.
The U.S. market will be closed on Friday in observance of the Independence Day holiday.
Against the yen, the U.S. dollar was flat at 161.06, with the greenback giving up gains as market liquidity was thinned by the holiday and traders remained on watch for intervention.
The Japanese currency has been choppy this week after Reuters reported on Thursday authorities may have adopted a new approach to their forays into the market.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a basket of six currencies, was down 0.3% at 100.71.
In early European trading, pan-region futures were up 0.3%, German DAX futures were 0.4% higher and FTSE futures nudged up 0.1%.
In commodities, Brent crude futures rose 0.6% to $72.26 a barrel in Asia. Gold was up 1.2% at $4,174.16.
In cryptocurrencies, bitcoin was flat at $61,549.17, while ether edged up 0.1% to $1,706.26.
(Reporting by Gregor Stuart Hunter; Editing by Jamie Freed and Thomas Derpinghaus)
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