• Shares in Asia were primed for a mixed opening Friday after selling pressure weakened US stocks and bonds as robust signals from the labor market weighed on expectations for interest rate cuts.
• Australian equities opened fractionally higher, while Japan share futures rose slightly, helped along by fresh yen weakness. Contracts for Hong Kong benchmarks slipped, while those for the US inched higher in early Asian trading.
• Those moves followed a fourth daily decline for the S&P 500 on Thursday while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 dropped for a fifth day — its worst showing since December 2022 — in a sign of selling pressure among last year’s winning tech stocks. The losses pushed a gauge of global equities down for a third day.