Asian stocks rise as non-farm payrolls dampen bets for rate hike

Stock markets across Asia edged higher as dismal US wage growth and non-farm payrolls number dampened hopes for September rate hike.

At the time of writing, Japan’s Nikkei was up 1.28% as the Japanese Yen retreated on Friday despite weak US data. Stocks in Australia, New Zealand were higher as well. South Korea’s Kospi was up 0.90%.

Buyers returned to markets as dismal wage growth numbers released on Friday in the US meant the Fed would delay rate hike to December. As per the CME data, September was never on the table, still a significant minority were calling for a move this month. Meanwhile, post the release of the weak data, December rate hike bets dropped to coin toss levels.

Shanghai Composite Index added 0.16%. The better-than-expected China services PMI released today turned out to be a non-event for the markets.

In the FX space, commodity dollars – AUD and NZD, strengthened against the dollar, while the Japanese Yen traded flat to negative. Gold prices were dead flat, while oil benchmarks suffered marginal losses.